Just when he made the discovery through his field glass of the havoc being wrought by the rebel battery and the momentary hesitation, Pleasanton, who did not happen to be in the best of humors with reference to it, was placed in the same situation in which Wellington for a few moments found himself on the day of Waterloo, when he employed the button-bagmanwith the blue umbrella under his arm, to carry some important orders. He was, in short, out of aide-de-camps. One by one they had been sent away to different points, and it so chanced, just then, that none had returned. Something very much like an oath muttered between the lips of the impatient veteran of forty, and one exclamation came out so that there was no difficulty in recognizing it:
"Nobody here when everybody is worst wanted! I wish the d—l had the whole pack of them!"
"PerhapsIcan do what you wish, General."
The words came from a young man in civilian's dress—gray pants and broad-brimmed felt hat, but with a military suspicion in his coat of light blue flannel,—who stood very near the commander, his horse's bridle over arm and a large field glass in hand, and who had apparently been scanning with much interest a scene of blood in which it was neither his duty nor his disposition to take part.
"You?" and the veteran turned upon him, with something very like a laugh on his lips. "You? Humph! Do you know what I want?"
"Some one to carry an order, I suppose!"
"Exactly! Over that causeway, to Kilpatrick at the bridge. Do you see how that flanking battery to the left is raking every thing, and the one in front is throwing beyond Kil's position? The chances are about even that the man who starts never gets there! Now do you wish to go?"
"No objection on that account!" was the reply of the young man, who seemed to be on terms of very easy intimacy with the General, as indeed he was,—a privileged visitor, who had accompanied him in the advance, but eminently "unattached" and thus far neither fighting nor expected to fight.
"The d—l you haven't! Well, ——, that is certainly cool, foryou! Never mind—if you like a little personal taste of what war really is, take this," and he scribbled a few words on a slip of paper on his raised knee—"take this and get it to Kilpatrick as soon as you can. If you do not come back again, I shall send word to your family."
"Oh, yes, thank you, General; but I shall come back again!" He had swung himself into the saddle of his gray, while Pleasanton was writing, and the veteran held the paper for one instant in his hand and looked into his face with a strange interest. What he saw there seemed to satisfy him, and he handed the paper with a nod. The volunteer aide-de-camp received it with a bow, and the next moment was flying towards the front of the Third, riding splendidly, running the gauntlet that has before been suggested, but untouched, and delivering his orders in very quick time and at emphatically the right moment. The important movement which immediately followed has already been narrated, in its bearing on the result of the day; but there were other effects not less important when personal destinies are taken into the account.
Gregg, who espied something on the right, that was likely to be hidden from Kilpatrick until it discovered itself by unpleasant consequences, had sent over an aide with a word of warning; and nearly at the same moment when the volunteer messenger from Pleasanton reached the brigadier, the officer from Gregg rode rapidly up from his direction. Both delivered their messages in a breath, and then both fell back at a gesture from the General. The aide from Gregg was turning his horse to ride back again to his post, when he caught a glance at the somewhat strangely attired man who had come in from Pleasanton. From his lower garments that glance naturally went up to his hat, and thence, by an equally natural movement, to his face. The dark brows of the officer bent darker in an instant, and perhaps there was that in his gaze which the otherfelt, (there are those who assert that such things are possible), for the next instant there was an answering glance and another pair of brows were knitted not less decidedly. Those two men were serving (more or less) in the same cause, but they looked as little as possible like two warm-hearted comrades in arms—much more as if they would have been delighted to take each other by the throat and mutually exert that gentle pressure calculated to expel a life or two!
Pleasanton was just calling out the Second to take the battery and clear the bridge. While he was doing so, the evil genius of one of those men drove them into collision. The messenger from Gregg, who wore the shoulder-straps and other accoutrements of a Captain on staff service, but with a cavalry sabre at his belt,—after the pause of a moment and while the other was still fixedly regarding him, spurred his horse close up to the side of the gray ridden by the civilian, and accosted him in a tone and with a general manner that he seemed to take no pains to render amiable:
"What areyoudoing here?"
"On staff service, Captain. How is your head?" was the reply, with quite as much of sneer in the tone as the other had displayed of arrogance.
"What do you call yourself just now?—'Horace Townsend' still?" was the Captain's next inquiry.
"To most others, yes: to you, Captain Hector Coles, just now, I am—" and he bent his mouth so close to the ear of the other that he could have no difficulty in hearing him, though he spoke the last words in a hoarse whisper that has even escapedus!
"I thought so, all the while!" was the reply, an expression of malignant joy crossing the face. "The same infernal coward—I knew it!"
The face of the man who had been Horace Townsend seemed convulsed by a spasm of mortal agony the instant after, but it gave place almost as quickly to an expression of set, deadly anger, the eyes blazing and the cheeks livid. He leaned close to the Captain and even grasped his arm as if to make sure that he should not get away before he had finished his whole sentence.
"Captain Hector Coles," he said, still in the same low, hoarse voice, but so near that the other could easily hear—"you called me the same name five or six weeks ago at the Crawford House, and I am afraid that Iprovedthat it belonged toyou!"
"I told you that I would kill you some day for that impertinence, and Iwill!" was the reply of the Captain, terrible anger in his face.
"No—if you kill me at all, and I do not think you will,—it will be because you believe me, with good reason, something more of a favorite with a lady whose name it is not necessary to mention, than yourself!"
This insulting boast of preference and allusion to Margaret Hayley were quite as well understood as they needed to be. There was another livid cheek, just then, and a fierce answering fire in the eye which told how deeply the barb rankled. But before the Captain could speak, to utter words that must have been equally bitter and blasphemous, the civilian continued:
"You challenged me for what I said at the White Mountains, Captain Hector Coles—you man with a swimming in the head! I refused your challenge then, but I accept it now. If you are not the coward you calledme, you will fight me here and instantly!"
"Here and now?" These were all the words that the surprised and possibly horrified Captain could utter.
"Exactly!" was the reply, the voice still low and hoarse but rapid and without one indication of tremor. "I told you that I was on staff service. So I am. I have just brought General Kilpatrick orders from General Pleasanton to clear that bridge and take the battery yonder that is doing us so much damage. Ah! by George—there goes another of our best fellows!" This as a round shot came tearing into the ranks just ahead, killing one of the troopers and his horse. Then he resumed, in the same low rapid tone: "You see those New York boys forming there, to do the work. Ride with them and withme, if youDARE, Captain Hector Coles, and see who goes furthest! That is my duel!"
"I?—I am on staff duty—not a mere cavalryman!" There was hesitation in the voice and deadly pallor on the cheek: the civilian heard the one and saw the other.
"Refuse to go with me and fight out our quarrel in that manner," the excited voice went on, "and by the God who made us both, the whole army shall know who is the coward! More—" and again his mouth was very near to the ear of the other—"sheshall know it!"
There are spells by which the fiend can always be raised, without much doubt, however troublesome it may be to find any means by which to lay him afterwards. To Captain Hector Coles there was one conjuration irresistible, and that had been used in the present instance. Shame before the whole army was nothing—it may be doubted, in fact, whether he had not known something of that infliction before at least a portion of the army, and survived it without difficulty. But shame before Margaret Hayley, after the boasts he had used, the underrating of others in which he had indulged, and the worship of physical courage which he knew to be actually a foible in her nature?—no, that was not to be thought of for one moment! Better wounds or death, out of the way of both which he had before so skilfully kept, than that! This reflection did not occupy many seconds, and his heavy brow was as black as thunder as he turned short round in the saddle and almost hissed at his tempter:
"Come on, then, fool as well as coward, and see how long before I will teach you a lesson!"
Horace Townsend—as he must still be called—did not say another word in reply. The Light Guard were by that time formed for the charge, and he merely said, in the hearing of all:
"Come—the Captain and I are going to take a ride with the boys! Who will lend me a sword?"
The strange demand for a moment drew general attention to him, and among other regards that of Kilpatrick. The idea of a civilian throwing himself into such a charge seemed to strike him at once, and before one of the orderlies could draw out his weapon and present it, the General had handed his, with the words:
"Here is mine!—Mind that you bring it back again!"
Kilpatrick unslung his sword and held up the scabbard with the blade, but the new volunteer merely drew out the blade with a bow and driving spurs into his gray dashed forward to the head of the column, Captain Hector Coles close beside him. Perhaps no two men ever went into battle side by side, with precisely the same relative feelings, since carving up men with the broadsword became a profession. Neither, it seems almost certain, had the least thought of devotion to the country, of hatred to the rebellion, or even ofesprit du corps, moving him to the contest. The one was intent upon revenging an insult received long before, by getting the other killed in proving him a coward,—and may have had another but still personal motive: that other was equally anxious to keep up his own reputation in the eyes of a woman, and to get removed out of his way a man whom he believed to be a rival, but who was really no more in his way than Shakspeare's nobody who "died a' Wednesday." Both half blind with rage and hate, and both, therefore—let the truth be told—bad soldiers! Both following a petty whim or facing death as a mere experiment, and neither with the most distant thought of the fate that rode close behind, to protect or to slay, and each alike inevitably!
Just then the bugle rang out, the commands "Column forward! Trot, march! Gallop, march! Charge!" rang out in quick succession, and away dashed the Second, with the results that have already been foreshadowed in the general account of the movement. But though armies and the various smaller bodies that form armies, are great aggregates of manhood, they are something more; and who can measure, in reading an account of that bridge so gallantly carried, that attack so splendidly repulsed, or that point of battle held against every odds, with the conclusion—"Our loss was only two hundred [or two thousand], in killed and wounded,"—who can measure, we ask, the amount of personal suffering involved in that movement and its result?—who can formany guess at the variety of personal adventure, depression, elevation, hope, fear, delirious joy and maddening horror, going to make up that event spoken of so flippantly as one great total?
The rebel battery beyond the bridge had been throwing round shot and shell, as has already been observed, reaching far beyond Kilpatrick's front and doing heavy damage. It was inevitable that as the advance of the attacking column was seen, that fire should be redoubled. And before they had crossed half the intervening distance the rain of bullets from the supporting rebel riflemen began to blend with the fall of heavier projectiles, making a very storm of destructive missiles, more difficult for horsemen to breast than any opposing charge of their own weight could have been, splitting heads, crashing out brains, boring bodies full of holes from which the blood and the life went out together, and hurling horses and riders to the ground with such frequency that wounded men had their little remaining breath trampled out by their own comrades and every fallen animal formed a temporary barricade over which another fell and became disabled. Through the air around them rang the scream of shell and the shrill whistle of bullets, blended with the inevitable cry that rose as some bullet found a fatal mark, and the roar of agony when a horse was hurled desperately wounded and yet living to the ground. The shout with which the troopers had at first broken into their charge, did not die away; and it did not cease, in fact, until the command had done its work—until the battery was taken and the supports scattered by the supplementary onset; but with what sounds it was blent before the cavalrymen reached the rebel guns, only those who have listened to the same horrible confusion of noises can form the most distant idea. To all others the attempt at description must be as vague as the thought of Armageddon or the Day of Falling Mountains!
If those sights and sounds cannot be described, who shall describe the sensations of those who then for the first timerode point-blank into the very face of death? Not we, certainly. The very man who has experienced them can tell no more, one hour after, of what existed at the time, than one moment's rift in a drifting cloud reveals of the starlit heaven above.
What Captain Hector Coles really felt when first meeting that iron and leaden storm so unlike the usual accompaniments of his "staff service," may be guessed but can never be known. He rode on gallantly, at least for a time: that was quite enough.
What theci-devantHorace Townsend experienced may be easily enough indicated, and in one word—madness. He was stark, raving mad! The anger felt a few moments before; the novelty of the position; the motion of a horse that bore him nobly: the sword, that was no holiday weapon but a thing of might and death, clasped by his unaccustomed but nervous hand; the shouts of fierce bravery, the groans of anguish and the scream of missiles; above all, the rousing for the first time of that human tiger which sleeps within most of us until the fit moment of awakening comes—no witches' cauldron on a blasted heath ever brewed such a mixture to craze a human brain, as that he was so suddenly drinking; and it may be said that his rational self knew nothing of what followed. He was riding on—it might have been on horseback on the solid earth, in a fiery chariot through the air, or on the crest of a storm-wave at sea—he could have formed no idea which. When he came within striking distance of the foe, he was swinging that heavy sword of Kilpatrick's, at something, everything, he knew not what, that seemed to stand in his way. Nothing appeared to hurt him, nothing to stop him or the gallant gray he rode. There was a red mist over his eyes, and the thunder of twenty judgments rang in his ears: he knew no more. He was mad, stark mad—so drunk with the wine of human blood and the fiendish joy of battle, that the powers of heaven might have looked down in pity on him as upon a new and betterdeveloped descendant of the original Cain, smiting all his brothers to a death that could not satisfy the hot thirst of his evil soul.
Only once he seemed to be for a moment clearly conscious. It was when they rode full upon the battery, trampling down men and horses and sabring every thing that had life, but under a fire which seemed to rain from the opened windows of hell. He saw a man who had thus far kept at his side, recoil, rein his horse backward, leap over the fallen friends and foes who barred his flight, and dash down the track towards the bridge. He saw, and knew Captain Hector Coles; and in his madness he had reason enough left to shout "Aha! Coward! Coward!" and then the red mist closed again over his eyes and he fought on. He did not see what followed before the flying man reached the bridge—the fragment of a shell that struck him in the back and literally tore him in pieces, horse and rider going down and lying stone dead together.
He could not have told, under oath, who gave the command for that supplemental charge upon the supporting force. And yethistongue uttered it, and he was in the front, still waving his sword through the red mist and letting it fall with demoniac force upon every thing that stood in his way,—when the last hope of the rebels was thus broken. He had known but little, most of the time: after that he knew literally nothing except that his fierce joy had turned to pain. As if through miles of forest he heard the notes of the bugles sounding the recall; and he had a dim consciousness of hearing the soldiers speaking of him in words that would have given him great pleasure had he been alive to appreciate them! Then he was back at the bridge. Kilpatrick was there, somebody cheered, and the General held out his hand to him. He tried to hand him back the sword that had done such good service, said: "I have brought it—back—" and spoke no more. Then and only then, as he fell from his blown and beaten gray, they knew that his first charge had a likelihood of being his last—that a Minie bullet, received so long before that some of theblood lay dried upon his coat, had passed through him from breast to back,—thank God not from back to breast!—so near the heart that even the surgeon could not say whether it had touched or missed it!
Once more at West Philadelphia—September and Change—Last glimpses of Kitty Hood and Dick Compton—Robert Brand and his Invited Guest—The News of Death—Old Espeth Graeme as a Seeress—The Despatch from Alexandria—The Quest of Brand and Margaret Hayley.
Once more at West Philadelphia—September and Change—Last glimpses of Kitty Hood and Dick Compton—Robert Brand and his Invited Guest—The News of Death—Old Espeth Graeme as a Seeress—The Despatch from Alexandria—The Quest of Brand and Margaret Hayley.
Hurrying rapidly towards its close, this narration must become yet more desultory and at times even more fragmentary, than it has been in the past. The seven-league boots of story must be pulled on, however unwillingly, and many a spot that would have been lingered lovingly over at the commencement of the journey, cleared now with a glance and a bound. The few pages that remain, in fact, may justify a change in the figure, appearing more like lightning glimpses from railroad-car windows than connected and leisurely views of the whole landscape of story.
September on West Philadelphia, where it seems but yesterday, though really three months ago, that we saw the fair June morning and inhaled the perfume of the sweet June roses. Those roses, the companions in life and death of that with which Margaret Hayley was toying on the morning when she met the crushing blow of her life,—had long since sighed out their last breath of fragrance and faded away, to be followed now by the bright green leaves amid which they had clustered and peeped and hidden. The waving grain fieldswhich had formed so pleasant a portion of the June landscape, were changed as much, though less sadly. Bright golden wheat that had formed part of it, lay heaped in the farmer's granaries; and puffed loaves with crisp brown crust, made from that which had still further progressed in its round of usefulness to man, lay on the baker's counter. There was short stubble where the grain had waved, and over it the second growth of clover was weaving its green mantle of concealment. In the peach orchards the fruit hung ripe to tempt the fingers; the apples were growing more golden amid the masses of leaves where they coyly sheltered themselves from the sun; and on the garden trellises there already began to be dots of purple among the amber green of the grape clusters. There was less of bright, glossy green in the foliage—nature's summer coat had been some time worn and began to give tokens of the rain and wind and sun it had encountered. The birds sang in the branches, but their song seemed more staid and less sprightly, as if they too had felt the passage of the months, grown older, and could be playful children no more. Occasionally the long clarionet chirp of a locust would break out and trill and die away upon the air, telling of fading summer and the decline of life so sweetly and yet so sadly that decay became almost a glory. The mellow, golden early afternoon of the year, as June had been its late morning—not less beautiful, perhaps, but oh how immeasurably less sprightly and bewitching—how much more calm, sober and subduing!
Nature moves onward, and humanity seldom stands still, if it does not outstrip the footsteps of the mother. Something of the changes that had fallen during the preceding three months upon that widely varied group of residents beyond the Schuylkill who have supplied characters to this narration, is already known: what remains may be briefly told at this stage and in the closing events soon to follow. Of those changes to Eleanor Hill, Nathan Bladesden and Dr. Pomeroy, directly; of those to the members of the Brand household, yet sooner; of those to two minor characters who will make nofurther appearance upon the stage during this life-drama, at once. Let that two be Dick Compton, farmer, and Kitty Hood, school-mistress. The latter yet managed her brood of troublesome children, who still sailed their vessels that had succeeded to the evanescent three-master "Snorter, of Philadelphia," at playtime, in the little pond before the rural school-house, and performed other juvenile operations by sea and shore; but a great change had fallen upon the merry, self-willed little girl with the brown eyes and the wavy brown hair. The school had a mistress, but that mistress had amaster—a sort of "power behind the throne" not seldom managed by one sex or the other, towards all persons "in authority." No bickerings at the school-house door, to be afterwards forgotten in explanations and kisses, now. Richard Compton found his way there, occasionally and perhaps oftener, but he always came in at once instead of the school-mistress going out to meet him with a bashful down-casting of the eyes and a pretty flush of modesty upon the cheek; and he made so little concealment about the visits that he often managed them so as to wait until school was dismissed and then walked all the way home with her! If the young lovers yet had secrets, they found some other place than the neighborhood of the school-house door, for their utterance. And the big girls and the bigger boys, who used to enjoy such multitudes of sly gibes at the school-mistress and her "beau," had lost all their material of amusement. The very last attempt at jocularity in that direction had been some time before effectually "squelched" by the dictum of the biggest boy in school: "You boys, jest stop peeking at 'em! He ain't her beau no more—he's her husband; and you jest let 'em do what they're a mind to!"
That is the fact, precisely—no less assured because approached with a little necessary circumlocution. Dick Compton had come back from Gettysburgh with the Reserves, unwounded and a hero. Carlton Brand was gone, and the only object of jealousy removed. And before Kitty had quite emerged from her "valley of humiliation" at the unfortunateslap and unpatriotic upbraiding, she found it too late to emerge at all. The wedding-day had been set and the marriage taken place, almost before she had any idea that such things were in immediate contemplation! Kitty Hood was "Mrs. Richard Compton," and that was the secret of the visits no longer stolen and the unabashed walking home together. Not that the visits of the young farmer to the school excited no commotion, now-a-days, but that the commotion was of a different character. All the big boys and some of the big girls hated him, as he strode up the aisle with his broad, hearty: "'Most ready to go home, Kitty?" and his proprietary taking possession of her with his eyes: hated him because he had to some extent come between her and them, and because there was a rumor that "after November he was not going to allow her to keep school any more." Perhaps there were good reasons for this resolution, into which we shall certainly make no more attempt to pry than was made by the big boys themselves! God's blessing on the young couple, with as much content in the farm-house as can well fall to the lot of a small indefinite number,—and with as few misunderstandings, coldnesses and jealousies as may be deemed necessary by the powers that preside over married life, to fit them for that life in which "they neither marry nor are given in marriage!" And so exit Mr. and Mrs. Richard Compton, for whom we have done all that the friend and the minister could do, leaving Providence and the doctor to take care of the remainder.
That matter properly disposed of, it becomes necessary to visit the house of Robert Brand once more, on the morning of Friday the eighteenth day of September, after an absence from it of nearly the three months before designated. Change here, too. Besides whatever might have been wrought in the master of the house during that period, of which we shall be soon advised, there had been a marked difference wrought in the relations sustained by good, warm-hearted, sisterly, darlinglittle Elsie. There had been no return to the house, of the old family physician, first expatriated, so to speak, by word of mouth, and then bull-dogged and threatened with the protrusion of loaded muskets from convenient windows and the application of the strong arms of old Elspeth Graeme who could handle the bull-dog. The doctor's-bill had long before been settled, and (let us put the whole truth upon record) spent! Then Robert Brand had been again seized with terrible illness and suffering, rendering a physician necessary; and what resource was left except the before-despised professional services of Dr. James Holton? None whatever. So the old man thought and so Elsie Brandknew. Result, Dr. James Holton had suddenly found himself, in July, the medical adviser of the Brands, and the adviser, mental, moral and medical, of Elsie. He had since so remained, seeming to do marvels at re-establishing the shattered constitution of the invalid and setting him once more on his natural feet, and with a pleasant prospect that all the difficulties were smoothed out of the way of his eventual union with Elsie, when a little more time and a little enlarged practice should make their marriage advisable. And Elsie had grown almost happy once more—quite happy in the regard of a good man whom she loved with all the warmth of the big heart in her plump little body, and yet restless, nervous and tearful when she thought of the brother cherished so dearly, of his broken love, his alienated father, his absence in a strange land, and the probability that she could never again lay her golden head upon his breast and look up into his eyes as to the noblest and most godlike of them all.
At a little before noon on that September morning, a single figure was moving slowly backward and forward, up and down, the length of the garden walk in the rear of the house of Robert Brand, the trellises of the grapery above and on either side, for nearly the whole distance, flecking the autumn sunshine that fell on the walk and on the moving figure, while from the vines themselves peeped the thick clusters of amberfruit upon which the purple bloom was just beginning to throw a hint of October and luscious ripeness. Late flowers bloomed in the walks and borders on either side; occasionally a bird sent up its quiet and contented twitter from the top of the vine where it was tasting a premature grape; a cicala's chirp rang feebly out, swelled up to a volume that filled the whole garden, then died away again, an indefinable feeling of stillness seeming to lie in the very sound. The sunlight was golden, the sky perfectly cloudless, the air balmy and indolent; beneath the trellis and beside the walk two long rustic settees combined with the wooing air and beckoned to closed eyes, day-dreams and repose; and yet the very opposite of repose was expressed in the appearance and movement of that single figure.
It was that of Robert Brand, three months older than we saw him in the early summer, far less an invalid than he had been at that time, as evidenced by the absence of his swathed limb and supporting cane, yet more broken within that period than most men break in ten twelvemonths—more than he had himself broken before in the same period of his severest years of bodily suffering. Something of the iron expression of the mouth was gone, and in its place were furrowed lines of suffering that the torture of the body could scarcely have imprinted there without the corresponding agony of the mind; he was more stooped in the shoulders than he had been when before observed; and down the side-hair that showed from beneath his broad hat—hair that had been fast but evenly changing from gray to white, there now lay great streaks of finger thickness, white as the driven snow and in painful contrast with the other,—such streaks as are not often made in hair or beard except by the pressure of terrible want, a great sorrow, or a month of California fever. This was not all—he walked with head dejectedly bent, and hands beneath the skirts of his coat; and when he glanced up for a moment it could be seen that his lip trembled and the eye had a sad, troubled expression that might havetold of tears past, tears to come, or a feeling far too absorbing for either. Alas!—the old man was indeed suffering. The shame of a life had been followed by its sorrow. He had erred terribly in meeting the one, and paid the after penalty: how could he muster fortitude enough to meet the other?
To him old Elspeth Graeme, large-faced, massive-framed, and powerful looking as of old, with a countenance no more changed during the preceding three months than a granite boulder in the mountains might have been affected by a little wind and storm during the same lapse of time. Behind her Carlo, who since the disappearance of his young master seemed to have found no one else except the old Scottish woman who could pretend to exercise any control over him, and who consequently had attached himself to her almost exclusively. The master, who was making one of his turns up the walk, saw her as she emerged from the house, and met her as she approached, with inquiry in face and voice.
"Well?"
"Stephen has just come ben with the carriage, and the leddy is in the house, though the Laird kens what ye'r wantin' of her here, ava!"
"Hold your tongue, woman! When I need your opinion I will ask you for it!" This in a tone very much like that of the Robert Brand of old, in little squabbles of the same character. Then with the voice much softened: "Is Margaret Hayley in the house, do you say?"
"'Deed she is, then, and she'll just be tired of waiting for ye, as the lassie's gone, gin ye dinna haste a bit!"
"I will come—no, ask her to step into the garden; I will see her here."
"He's gettin' dafter than ever, I'm thinkin', to invite a born leddy out into the garden to seehim, instead of ganging in till her as he should!" muttered the old serving-woman as she turned away to obey the injunction, and in that way satisfying, for the time, her part of the inevitable quarrel. The moment after the back door of the house opened again,and Margaret Hayley came out alone. Stately as ever in step, though perhaps a little slower; the charm of youth and budding womanhood in face and figure, with the broad sun flashing on her dark hair and seeming to crown her with a dusky glory; but something calmer, softer, sadder, ay, even older, visible in her whole appearance and manner, than could have been read there in that first morning of June, upon the piazza of her own house. She, too, had been living much within a brief period: it may be that the course of this narration has furnished the reader with better data for judginghowmuch, than any that lay in the possession of Robert Brand.
She approached the end of the arbor from which he was emerging, and he met her before she had reached it. Her face, as they met, wore an unmistakable expression of wonder—his an equally unmistakable one of pain. Neither spoke for one moment, then the old lawyer held out his hand and said:
"You wonder, Margaret, why I sent for you?"
"Didyousend, really, Mr. Brand? I thought that perhaps Stephen had made a mistake and that Elsie wished to see me for some reason."
"No, Elsie has been absent all the morning, and may not return for an hour or two yet," was the reply. "Isent for you. I had a reason. Old men do not trifle with young women, perhaps you are aware." There was that in his voice which displayed strong suffering and even an effort to speak. The young girl saw and heard, and the wonder in her eyes deepened into anxiety as she said:
"You surprise me by something in your manner, Mr. Brand. You almost alarm me. Pray do not keep me in suspense. I think I am not so well able to bear anxiety and mystery as I used to be. Why did you send for me?"
"Poor girl!" the lips of Robert Brand muttered, so low that she did not catch the words. Much less did she hear the two words that followed, in little more than a whisperedgroan: "Poor girl!—poor father!" Then he took one of the white hands in his, the eyes of the young girl deepening in wonder and anxiety all the while,—led her a little down the path to one of the rustic seats under the trellis, dropped down upon it and drew her down beside him, uttering a sigh, as he took his seat, like that of a person over-fatigued.
"You loved my son." He did not look at her as he spoke the words.
"Mr. Brand—I beg of you—" and then Margaret Hayley paused, her throat absolutely choked with that to which she could not give utterance. He did not seem to heed her, but went on.
"You loved my son. So did I. God knows howIloved him, and I believe that your love was as true as heaven."
"Mr. Brand—for that heaven's sake, why do you say this, to kill us both? I cannot listen—" she rose from the seat with a start and stood before him as if ready to fly; but he yet retained her hand and drew her down again.
"We both loved him, and yet we killed him! You drove him from you. I cast him off and cursed him. We killed him. He is dead!"
"Dead?" The word was not a question—it was not an exclamation—it was not a cry of mortal agony—it was all three blended. Then she uttered no other word but sat as one stupefied, while he went on, his lip quivering with that most painful expression which has before been noticed, and his hand fumbling at his pocket for something that he seemed to wish to extract from it.
"Yes, he is dead. I have known it for two hours—for two long hours I have known that I hadno son." Type cannot indicate the melancholy fall of the last two words, and the heart-broken feeling they conveyed. "My son loved you, Margaret Hayley, better than he loved his old father. You loved him. You should have been his wife. When I knew that he was dead, I tried to conceal it from all until I could send for you, for I felt that it was only here and from my lipsthat you should learn the truth. Some other might have told you with less thought for your feelings, perhaps, than I who—who—who was so proud of him. I have not been rough, have I? I did not mean to be—I meant to be very gentle, toyou, Margaret! See how broken I am!"
So he was, poor old man!—broken in heart and voice, for then he gave way and dropped his head upon one of his failing hands, overpowered, helpless, little more than a child.
Who shall describe the feelings of Margaret Hayley as she heard the words which told her of that one bereavement beyond hope—as she heard them in those piteous tones and from that agonized father—a father no more? Absence, silence, shame, separation of heart from heart upon earth, hope against hope and fear without a name—all were closed and finished at once and forever, in that one great earthquake of fact, opening and swallowing her world of thought—dead! Tears had not yet come—the blind agony that precedes them if it does not render them impossible, was just then her terrible portion.
"How did he—when—where—you have not told me—" A child just learning to speak might have been making that feeble attempt at asking a connected question. But Robert Brand understood her, too well. His hand, again fumbling at his pocket, brought out that of which it had been in search, and his trembling fingers half opened a newspaper and put it into hers, to blast her sense with that greater certainty which seems to dwell in written or printed intelligence than in the mere utterance of the lips—to destroy the last lingering hope that might have remained and put the very dying scene before the eyes so little fitted to look upon it. A line of ink was drawn around part of one of the columns uppermost, and the reader had not even the painful respite of looking to find what she dreaded. And of course that paper was a copy of theDublin Evening Mail, sent to Robert Brand by one of his distant relatives in England who had chanced to see what it contained—the graphic account of the drowning ofCarlton Brand from the deck of the despatch-steamer, of the finding of the body and the burial in the little graveyard back of the Hill of Howth, written by that attached friend of a night, Henry Fitzmaurice.
Margaret Hayley read through that account, every word of which seemed to exhaust one more drop from the life-blood at her heart,—in stony silence and without a motion that could have been perceived. Then the paper slid from her hands to the ground, she turned her head towards Robert Brand with that slow and undecided motion so sad to see because it indicates a palsying of the quick natural energies; and the instant after, that took place which told, better than any other action could have done, how much each had built upon that foundation of an expected near and dear relationship. Robert Brand met that hopeless gaze, reading her whole secret even as his own was being read. Then he opened his arms with a cry that was almost a scream: "My daughter!" and the poor girl fell into them and flung her own around his neck with the answering cry: "Father!" Both were sobbing then; both had found the relief of tears. And a sadder spectacle was never presented; for while Margaret Hayley, in the father of the man she had so loved, was striving to embrace something of the dead form that never could be embraced in reality, Robert Brand was still more truly clasping a shadow—trying to find his lost son who could never come to his arms again, in the thing which had been dearest to that son while in life!
"My son is dead! Come to me; live with me; be a sister to Elsie and a daughter to me, or I shall never be able to bear my punishment!" sobbed the broken old man, his arms still around the pliant form bowed upon his shoulder; but there came no answer, as there needed none. Another voice blended with those that had before spoken, at that moment, and again old Elspeth Graeme stood under the trellis. But was it said a little while since that no change had come upon her since the fading of the roses of June?—certainly there had been a changestartling and fearful to contemplate, even in the few moments elapsing since her former speech with her master. The rough, coarse face had assumed an expression in which bitter sorrow was contending with terrible anger; the bluish gray eyes literally blazed with such light as might have filled those of a tigress robbed of her young; and it would have needed no violent stretch of fancy to believe that she had revived one of the old traditions of her Gaelic race and become a mad prophetess of wrath and denunciation. Strangely enough, too, Carlo was again behind her, his eyes glaring upon the two figures that occupied the bench, and his heavy tail moving with that slow threatening motion which precedes the spring of the beast of prey! Was old Elspeth Graeme indeed a wierd woman, and had the brute changed to be her familiar and avenging spirit?
The serving-woman held something white in her hand, but neither Robert Brand nor his visitor saw it. They but saw the tall form and the face convulsed with wild feeling; and both seemed to shrink before a presence mightier than themselves. The strange servitor spoke:
"Robert Brand, tell me gin I heard aright! Did ye say that Carlton Brand was dead?"
"Who called you here, woman? Yes, he is dead! He was drowned on the Irish coast three weeks ago," answered the bereaved father, oddly blending the harsh authority of the master with the feeling which really compelled him to make response.
"Then ye had better baith be dead wi' him—the father who banned his ain flesh and bluid and wished that he would dee before his very eyne, and the fause woman who had nae mair heart than to drive him frae her like a dog!"
"Woman!" broke out the master, but the interruption did not check her for an instant. She went on, broadening yet more in her native dialect as she grew yet more earnest:
"Nae, ye must e'en bide my wull and tak' it, Robert Brand! It has been waiting here for mony a day, and I can haud itnae longer! He was my braw, bonnie lad, and puir auld Elsie loed him better than ye a'! I harkit till ye, Robert Brand, when yer curse went blawin' through the biggin like an east win', and I ken'd ye was sawin a fuff to reap a swirl! Ye must ban and dom yer ain bluid because it wad na fecht, drivin' the bairn awa frae kin and kintra, and noo ye haemycurse to stay wi ye, sleepin' and wakin'—ye an' the fause beauty there that helpit ye work his dool!"
"Elspeth Graeme, if you say another word to insult Miss Hayley and outrage me, I will forget that you are a woman and choke you where you stand!" cried Robert Brand, no longer able to restrain himself, starting to his feet and drawing Margaret to the same position, with his arm around her waist. But the old woman did not flinch, or pause long in her denunciation.
"Nae, ye'll do naething of the kind, Robert Brand!—ye'll tak what must come till ye!" And indeed it looked as if the great dog behind her would have sprung at the throat of even the master if he had dared to lay hands on his strange servitor. "Ye'll tak the curse, baith o' ye, and ye'll groan under it until the day ye dee! Gin Carlton Brand is dead, ye murdered him, and his eldritch ghaist shall come back and haunt ye, by night and by day, in the mist o' the mountain and the crowd o' the street, till yer blastit under it and think auld Hornie has grippet ye by the hearts! Ye'll sing dool belyve, baith of ye! Auld Elsie tells ye so, and slight her if ye daur!"
Before these last words were spoken, Margaret Hayley had slipped from the grasp of the old man and was on her knees upon the ground, her proud spirit fairly broken, her hands raised in piteous entreaty, and her lips uttering feebly:
"Oh, we have both wronged him—I know it now. But spare me, good Elspeth, now when my heart is broken; and sparehim!"
But Robert Brand, as was only natural—Robert Brand, feeble as he was, viewed the matter in a somewhat differentlight. Sorrow might have softened him, but it had by no means entirely cured his temper; and the serving-woman had certainly gone to such lengths in her freedom as might have provoked a saint to something very much like anger. He grasped Margaret from her kneeling position, apparently forgetting pain and weakness,—set her upon the seat and poured out a volley of sound, strong plain-English curses upon the old woman, that had no difficulty whatever in being understood. Dog or no dog, it seemed probable that he might even have given vent to his rage in a more forcible manner, when another interruption occurred which somewhat changed the posture of affairs.
Elsie Brand came out from the house, hat upon head, and dressed as for a ride. She had been taking one, in fact, with Dr. James Holton, who had driven her over for a call upon one of her friends; and she looked radiant enough to proclaim the truth that she had just left very pleasant company. Her plump little form as tempting and Hebe-ish as ever; her bright yellow hair a little "touzled" (it could not be possible that those people had been laying their heads too near together in the carriage as they came across the wood road!); and her blue eyes one flash of pleasure that had forgotten all the pain and sorrow in the world,—she was a strange element, just then, to infuse into the blending of griefs within that garden. She came out with hasty step, calling to Elspeth.
"Elspeth! Elspeth! What keeps you so long? The boy is waiting to know if father has any answer." Then seeing the others: "What, Margaret here with father? How do you do, Margaret?" It was notable how the voice fell slowed and softened, in speaking the last five words, and how the light went out from her young eyes as she spoke. Though friends always, Margaret Hayley and Elsie Brand had never been the same as before to each other, since that painful June morning on the piazza. How could they be? But Margaret was softened now, and she said, "Dear Elsie!"took the little girl in her arms and kissed her, so that something of the past seemed to have returned.
But meanwhile another incident of importance was occurring. It may have been noticed that Elspeth Graeme had something white in her hand when she came out into the garden the second time. So she had, indeed—a folded note addressed to Robert Brand, and with a wilderness of printing scattered over the edges and half the face of the envelope; but she had quite forgotten the fact in the sudden knowledge of the death of her young master and the necessity of becoming an avenging Pythoness for the occasion. Now, Elsie's words called the attention of the old lawyer to that something in her hand, and he took it from her with a motion very much like a jerk, and the words:
"If you have a letter for me, why did you not give it to me instead of standing here raving like a bedlamite—you old fool?"
"It is na a letter; it's what they ca' a telegraph, I'm thinkin'!" muttered the old woman, a good deal taken down from her "high horse" by this reminder of her delinquency, and with some sort of impression that this must be a sufficient apology for not being in a hurry. "Somebody else dead, belike!—we're a' goin' to the deevil as fast as auld Clootie can drag us, I ken!"
Itwasa telegraphic despatch which the old woman had delivered with such signal celerity, and which Robert Brand tore open with celerity of a very different character. He read, then read again, then his face paled, and a strange, startled look came into his eyes, and he put one hand to his forehead with the exclamation:
"Whatisall this? Am I going mad?"
"Whatisit, father?" and little Elsie pressed up to his side and took the despatch from his unresisting fingers. And it was she who read it aloud to the other wonderers, herself the most startled wonderer of all: