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

by Henry Morford

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE RESIDENCE OF THE BRANDS--ROBERT BRAND AND DR. PHILIP POMEROY--RADICAL AND COPPERHEAD--A PASSAGE-AT-ARMS THAT ENDED IN A QUARREL--ELSPETH GRAEME THE HOUSEKEEPER--THE SHADOW OF SHAME--FATHER AND DAUGHTER--THE FALLING OF A PARENT'S CURSE.

  Half a mile northward from the Market street road which has already beenbefore so many times alluded to--on the north side of that road and at thedistance of a mile westward from the Hayley residence, was located thatbefore mentioned as the abode of the Brands. It was a fine old house, builtfifty or sixty years before, but within a few years repaired and rebuiltwith a lavish disregard of cost, a railed promenade having been added atthe apex of the steep roof, the whole two stories of height re-enclosed,the windows and doors comparatively modernized, the piazzas remodelled andwidened, and all done that the carpenter's art could well be expected toachieve, to add to the comfort and durability of the mansion withoutdestroying the appearance of respectable age which it had already put on.The house stood facing southward upon nearly level ground, the lawn infront of good depth and thickly dotted with forest and other shade treesthat had evidently known all the years of the building; while from theeastern side a narrow lane ran down to the road and afforded ingress andegress to carriages passing back towards the handsomely-grouped range ofoutbuildings in the rear. Adjoining this lane and behind the house was alarge garden, with grape trellises and many of the appliances of luxury inhorticulture.

  At the eastern end of the piazza a broad single door opened into thesomewhat antiquated hall; and from that hall a door opened into a parlorfitted up with every appliance of convenience that could be needed in sucha country residence. Behind that parlor another door opened into a smallerapartment correspondingly fitted but with more of those belongingscalculated to show its constant occupancy; and from that rear room stillanother door opening to the left disclosed a bed-room of comfortableappearance and tasteful arrangement. On the other side of the hall thedining and domestic apartments stretched away, while the spacious upperstory supplied rooms to other members of the family.

  It was very evident, at a glance, that wealth presided over the modernizedold house, and that good taste was not forgotten; and yet an impressioncould not well be avoided that there must be something of severity, andrepugnance to ornament, conjoined with the wealth. Poverty, or evenstruggling pride, would not have afforded so much of the best: warm tasteand lavish liberality would have supplied something more of the costly andthe luxurious.

  In the second of the rooms mentioned--that immediately in the rear of theparlor, two persons were in conversation at about noon of the same day ofthe occurrences previously recorded. The one, sitting in an easy-chair withhis right leg raised and resting upon another chair crowned with apillow,--was apparently sixty-five to seventy years of age; tall, if hisproportions could properly be judged as he sat, with a figure that musthave been robust in its time; the hair so nearly white as to preclude anyidea of the color which it might have worn in earlier days; the face wellcut and even handsome for its age, though with a shade of severity in thefirm nose and shaven lips, which under some circumstances might growthreatening; but any accurate judgment of his character rendered difficult,by the look of pain stamped upon his face by evident bodily suffering.Resting against a small table partially covered with bandages andembrocations, was a stout cane, indicating both that the invalid was in thehabit of using a support of that character, and that he could not, evennow, be entirely confined to his chair. Such was Robert Brand, owner ofthe mansion into which we have been introduced, and father of two childrenapparently as little alike in nature as in sex--Carlton and Elsie Brand.

  The second figure was quite as well deserving of notice as the old man inhis easy-chair. Doctor Philip Pomeroy, who was at that moment pacing up anddown the room without any apparent cause for that violent exercise in warmweather, was a man in whom the acute physiognomist might have foundsomething illustrated by that seemingly listless motion--somethingpossessed in common by restless men, in the superior animal kingdom, andthose bears and hyenas which seem to traverse a great many unnecessarymiles in travelling up and down the bars of their cages, in the inferior.And yet the doctor could not have been called, with any propriety, an"animal-looking man"--it was the motion which supplied the comparison. Hewas apparently forty-five to fifty, tall and slight figured, with faceclean shaven except a heavy dark moustache, features a little aquiline anddecidedly sharp lips that suggested an occasional sneer and a word cuttinglike a scimetar, eyes of keen scintillant dark brown or black, and ratherlong dark straight hair through which the threads of silver began to showmore as an ornament than a disadvantage. A very fine looking man--a man ofundoubted power and will--a man who had evidently enjoyed the mostfavorable associations; and yet how nearly a man to be either braved ortrusted without reserve, it might have needed Lavater's self to decide on abrief acquaintance. That same Lavater, if acquainted with the peculiaritiesof road turn-outs, would have decided one point, at least, from the vehiclethat stood in the lane, near the door--no clumsy and cumbersome gig,weighing an indefinite number of tons and set down as the proper conveyancefor doctors from the day when the first one grew too lazy to walk,--but alight, sporting-looking buggy, seated for one, and suggesting fast drivingquite as much as the high-blooded, thorough-bred bay that champed his bitbefore it and stamped impatiently for the coming of his master.

  From the medical character of the visitor and the disabled appearance ofthe man in the easy-chair, it might have been concluded that the call was aprofessional one; and such was indeed the fact. An injury to the right limbof Robert Brand, received many years before, had a habit of assertingitself at uncertain periods, crippling him materially all the while, and atthose particular times throwing him into all those agonies indifferentlyknown as the pangs of neuralgia and inflammatory rheumatism. At suchperiods, the traditional character of the "gouty old Admiral" of theEnglish stage, always limping and thumping a heavy cane, and nearly alwaysventing words more forcible than polite, was very nearly illustrated in theold gentleman, his desire for active motion being generally in an inverseratio to the power of movement. Dr. Pomeroy, one of the most skilful of thephysicians of the section, and a man in very extensive practice, was alwayshis medical adviser at such times, and re-directed the application of thosewarm flannels and neutralizing embrocations which constituted all that evenscience could do for the alleviation of his sufferings, and about which oldElspeth the housekeeper knew a good deal more, all the while, than anyphysician could possibly do. For the three days previous, Robert Brand hadbeen suffering to a most painful degree, and this was the third of thedaily visits of the doctor.

  But whatever might have been the professional character of the visit, ithad, before the moment when our attention is called to the twointerlocutors, lost any feature which could have marked it as such. RobertBrand was a patriot, almost equally warm-hearted and hot-headed in the typeof his attachment to his country; while Dr. Pomeroy was one of thosequasi-loyalists, popularly called "Copperheads," who have the love ofcountry quite as often on their lips as the most unshrinking war-advocatecan do, but who prefer to show that love by objecting to every effort madefor the preservation of nationality, by denouncing, in every nine words outof ten, something done by the loyal government, while only the poor tenthis kept for a wail over the unfortunate character of the "civil war,"--andby undervaluing every success won by the Union arms, while every momentaryadvantage gained by the rebels is correspondingly magnified. He seemed totake particular delight, always, in tormenting the old gentleman just tothe verge of a positive rupture without quite causing one; and just now, inthe advance of the rebel forces into Pennsylvania, he found a goldenopportunity.

  "Bah!" he said, in response to a strongly patriotic expression of hispatron, which had led him to bring down one of his hands upon the disabledleg with a force causing a new tingle in that limb and a new expression ofagony upon his face--"bah! All you hot-headed people, young and old,
usejust such language, all the while. It amounts to nothing, except thatperhaps it eases your minds. Saying that 'the Union must and shall bepreserved,' and prophesying all kinds of good things for the nation, amountto but very little while a set of incapables sit filling their pockets atWashington (more than half of them traitors, in my opinion), while the armyis worse mismanaged than it could be if a set of school-boys led it, andwhile the enemies you affect to despise are really winning every thing andoverrunning the whole country."

  "Out upon you, Dr. Pomeroy!" cried the old man, angrily. "You dare to callyourself a patriot, and talk in that manner! There are plenty of fools atWashington, but I would rather see fools there than traitors! If you arenot a perfect block-head, you know that the rebels have lost twice as muchas they have gained, within the past year, and that if the fight goes on inthe same manner for one year more, the miserable mongrel concern will dieof its own weakness! But you do not _want_ it to die--that is just whatails _you_!--you would rather see Jeff Davis in the Capitol than any loyalman who would not give all the offices to your miserable broken-downparty!"

  "And you would rather see the whole country lying in ruins, with heaps ofdead everywhere and the few who remain starving to death in the midst ofthem, than that the country should be in any other hands than those of yourfriends who do nothing else than talk about the nigger, legislate for thenigger, and fight for the nigger!" answered the doctor, still continuinghis walk, and his face showing decided temper.

  "It is false, and you know it, Philip Pomeroy!" said the invalid, with amotion of his hand towards the big cane, which indicated that he would haveliked to use it by breaking it over the doctor's head.

  "It is true, and _you_ know it, Robert Brand!" replied the doctor, whosetemper seemed to return to its equanimity the moment he had succeeded inthrowing his patient into a sufficient rage. "But you need not take so muchpains to conceal your opinions, old gentleman! _I_ don't! If the country isto lie under the control of men who only legislate and fight for thenigger, who trample upon the Constitution and fill Fort McHenry and FortLafayette and Fort Warren with better men than themselves, who do nothappen to think and act precisely as _they_ do,--why, the sooner that JeffDavis, or any one else, gets possession, the better for all concerned."

  "Doctor Pomeroy, you ought to be taken and hung, with the other traitors,and I shouldn't much mind having a pull at the rope!" broke out the oldman, now almost entirely beside himself with indignation.

  "Oh, I know that!" answered the doctor, whose temper was still visiblyimproving as that of his patient grew worse. "Any of your abolition packwould have helped to hang every democrat, long ago, if they had only_dared_! The only trouble is that they did not do it while they had theopportunity. Now it is too late. You daren't open the doors of yourState-prisons any more, unless it is to let somebody _out_! And before manydays some of you will sing a different tune--take my word for it. Some ofyou radicals, even here at Philadelphia, will try to make the Confederateleaders believe that you have been the truest friends of the South, all thewhile."

  "What do you mean, you scoundrel?" asked the old gentleman, whose harshwords to a man somewhat younger than himself appeared to be fullyunderstood and not taken in quite the sense which they might have borne toother ears.

  "I mean that Lee will take Harrisburgh, and that next he will takePhiladelphia; then--"

  "Take Purgatory! He can never take Harrisburgh, let alone Philadelphia!"

  "He can and will take it! What is to hinder him?"

  "Just what has hindered his taking Washington, any time the last twoyears--better troops than his own, and more of them."

  "Sheep before butchers'-dogs! The men of the North have never gone into thewar at all, and they never will go. That scum which you call an army cannotfight the earnest and determined men of the South, and you ought to knowit. Within a week Lee will be in Philadelphia, and then we will see aboutthe change of tune!"

  "Within a week, if he dares advance, he will be eaten up by the Statemilitia alone, even if the Army of the Potomac does not save them thetrouble!" said the old man.

  "The Army of the Potomac has been good for nothing ever since Hookerblundered its last opportunity away at Chancellorsville!" retorted thephysician. "The army has no confidence in _him_, and the country has noconfidence either in him or the army. The State militia will vigorouslystay at home, or they will behave so badly after they go out, that they hadmuch better kept where nobody saw them! Oh, by the way!--" and the face ofthe doctor lit up with a new expression. A sneer settled itself upon hiswell-formed lips, and there came into his scintillant eyes a gleam ofdeadly dislike which boded no good to the subject of which he was about tospeak. He might have been only half in earnest, before, while driving theold man wild with his Copperhead banter; but he was certainly interested inwhat he was about to say, now!

  "Well?" asked the patient, querulously, as he saw that some new topic wasto interlard that which had already been so unpleasant.

  "That State militia you were talking about," said the doctor. "Your son wasexpected to take up his old commission and go out with one of theregiments, was he not?"

  "He was not only expected to do so, but he has done so!" answered thefather, with love and pride in his eyes. "Not all the people in the countryare either Copperheads or cowards, doctor; and I am proud to tell you thatif _I_ am too old and too much crippled to take part in the battles of mycountry, or even to get up and break my cane over your head when you insultthe very name of patriotism,--I have a son who when his opportunity comescan do the one and will do the other!"

  "When his 'opportunity' comes!" echoed the doctor, sneeringly.

  "Yes, his opportunity!" re-echoed the father, who felt that there wassomething invidious in the tone, though he could not read that face whichmight have given him a better clue to the character of the man with whom hewas dealing. "My son has been too much hampered with business before, toaccept any of the chances which have been offered him; but now that hisnative State is invaded, business is thrown by and you will find him, sir,keeping up the honor of the name."

  "Humph!" said the doctor, pausing in his walk and for some unexplainablereason going to the window and looking out; so that he stood with his backto the old gentleman. "Where is your son, now?"

  "Where? Gone down to the rendezvous to take his commission, of course, as Iunderstand that the troops will leave to-night."

  "Humph!" once more said the doctor, in the same insolent tone and retaininghis position at the window. "And yet I happen to know that your son hasdiscovered some new '_business_,' (with a terribly significant emphasis onthe last word) and that he is not going one step with the regiment."

  "Dr. Pomeroy, I know better!" was the reply.

  "Mr. Brand, I know what I am talking about, a good deal better than youimagine!" sneered the doctor, who having by that time managed to get hisface into that shape which he had no objection to being seen by hispatient, now turned about and faced him, with his hands under the tails ofhis coat.

  "_What_ do you know?" was the inquiry, a little trouble blending with theanxiety in the face.

  "Well, I will tell you, as perhaps you may as well learn the fact from meas from any one else," answered the doctor, his tones now very smooth, andhis manner almost deferential, as should be the demeanor of any man towardshis victim at the moment of stabbing him under the fifth rib. "I hadoccasion to call at the armory of the Reserves, an hour or two ago, to setthe broken arm of one of the fellows who had taken too much Monongahela inanticipation of his start, and fallen down-stairs. I learned there andthen, with some surprise and not a little grief (the father ought to havecaught the expression of his face at that moment, and thereby measured the"grief" indicated!) that Mr. Carlton Brand had been down at the armory,alleged his _business_ to be such that he could not possibly leave thecity, and declined any further connection whatever with the regiment."

  "It is impossible!" said the father.

  "It is true, however, like a good many
impossible things!" again sneeredthe physician. "And I have been thinking whether some others of members ofthe State militia would not be found like your amiable son--too _busy_ topay any attention to the defence of the State!"

  "Dr. Pomeroy!" said the father, after one moment of almost stupefiedsilence. "Dr. Pomeroy, you have not been friends with my son for a longtime, and I know it, though I do not know what could have caused anydisagreement. But I do not suppose you would deliberately tell a falsehoodabout him that could be detected in half an hour; and I want to know whatthere is hidden in your words, more than you have chosen to convey."

  "You had better ask your son when he comes!" was the reply.

  "No--I ask _you, now_, and I think you had better answer me!" said the oldman.

  "Well, then," answered the doctor, "if you insist upon it, my love for theyoung man is not so warm as to give me a great deal of pain in the telling,and you may know all you wish. Your son has been doubted a little, eversince the breaking out of the war, from his repeated refusals of positionsin the army; and--"

  "The man who says that my son is disloyal, lies!" cried the old man,interrupting him. "You, or any other man!"

  "It was not on the ground of his _disloyalty_ that he was suspected!"sneered the doctor.

  "And what ground then?" asked the father, his face and his whole mannershowing something terrible within that could be only partially suppressed.

  "The ground of his _cowardice_, since you will have it!" spoke the doctor,in such a tone of fiendish exultation as Mephistopheles may have used toFaust, at the moment of assuring him that the last hope of happiness onearth or pardon from heaven had been swept away in the slaughter ofValentine and the moral murder of Marguerite. "There is not an officer inthe Reserves, who heard him refuse to join the regiment this morning, butbelieves him--yes, _knows_ him, to be an arrant poltroon."

  "Doctor Philip Pomeroy, you are a liar as well as a traitor and ascoundrel! If I had two legs, and still was, as I am, old enough to be yourfather, you would not leave this house without broken bones! Get out of it,send me your bill to-morrow, or even to-day, and never let me see you setfoot in it again while I live!"

  The face of the old man was fearful, at that juncture. In spite of the painof his disabled limb, he had grasped his cane and struggled to a standingposition, before concluding his violent words; and as he concluded, passionovercame all prudence, and the heavy cane went by the doctor's head,crashing through the window and taking its way out into the garden, at thesame moment when his limb gave way and he sunk back into his chair with agroan that was almost a shriek, clutching at the bell-rope that hung nearhim and nearly tearing it from its fastenings.

  Dr. Pomeroy said not another word, whatever he might have felt. He haddodged the flying cane, by not more than an inch, and such chances are notlikely to improve the temper of even the most amiable. For one instantthere was something in his face that might have threatened personal revengeof the violence as well as the unpardonable words, in spite of thedifference of age: then the sneer crept over his face again, he stepped outthrough the parlor into the hall, took his hat, and the next moment wasbowling down the lane into the road, behind his fast-trotting bay. Itseemed likely that his last professional visit to the Brands had been paid,even if it had not yet been paid for!

  The terrible appeal of the master of the house to the bell-rope at his handwas answered the moment after by the appearance of a woman of so remarkablean aspect as to be worthy of quite as much attention as either of thepersonages who have before been called, in the same room, to the reader'sattention. Her dress was that of a housekeeper or upper servant, though theheight of her carriage and the erectness of her figure might have stampedher as an empress. And in truth that figure did not need any suchextraordinary carriage to develop it, for, as compared with the ordinarystature of woman, it was little else than gigantic. The man who built adoor for Elspeth Graeme, less than six feet in the clear, subjected her toimminent danger of bringing up with a "bump" every time she entered it; andher broad, square, bony figure showed that all the power of her frame hadnot been frittered away in length. Her hands were large and masculine,though by no means ill-shaped, and her foot had not only the tread supposedto belong to that of the coarser sex, but very nearly its size. In face shewas broad yet still longer of feature, with hair that had been light brownbefore the gray sifted itself so thickly among it as to render the colordoubtful,--with eyes of bluish gray, a strong and somewhat coarse mouthwith no contemptible approach to a moustache of light hairs bristling atthe corners,--and with complexion wrinkled and browned by the exposures ofat least sixty years, until very nearly the last trace of what had oncebeen youth and womanhood was worn away and forgotten. Yet there wassomething very good and very kindly amid the rugged strength of the face;and while little children might at the first glance have feared the oldwoman and run away from her as a "witch," they would at the secondcertainly have crept back to her knees and depended upon a protection whichthey were certain to receive.

  It is only necessary, to say, in addition, that she was Scottish by birthas well as by blood and name--that she had come to this country nearlyforty years before, when Robert Brand was a young man, and attached herselfto the fortunes of the family because they were Scottish by blood and shewas the very incarnation of faithful feudality--that his daughter had beennamed Elspeth (since softened to Elsie) at her earnest desire, because shesaid the name was "the bonniest ava" and she had herself been named aftera noble lady who bore it, in her own land, and who had done much to giveher that upright carriage by standing as her god-mother--and that for manya long year, now, she had been the working head of the Brand household,scarcely more so since the death of its weak, hysterical mistress, a dozenyears before, than while she was alive and pretending to a management whichshe never understood.

  If any one person beneath that roof, more legitimately than another,belonged to the family and felt herself so belonging, that person wasElspeth Graeme; and if something of the romantic, which the stern sense ofthe father would have been slow to approve, had grown up in both hischildren, it was to the partial love of Elspeth and her stories of Scottishromance, poetry, history, song and superstition, carrying them away fromprosaic America to the wimpling burns and haunted glens of the land fromwhich their blood had been derived,--that such a feeling, fortunate orunfortunate as the future might prove, was principally to be credited.

  "Did you ring, sir? Ech, Lord, the mon's deein'!" were the two verydifferent exclamations made by Elspeth as she entered the room, after thedeparture of the doctor, and caught sight of the situation in which themaster seemed to be lying.

  "No, Elspeth, I am not 'deein' as you call it," he growled out, when thepain of his exertion had again somewhat subsided and he could find breathfor words. "But I wish I was! Is that cursed doctor gone?"

  "He was gettin' to his carriage the minute, and he's awa by this," answeredthe housekeeper. "But what ava has he been doin' to ye? Murderin' yemaybe!--they're a dolefu' uncanny set, the doctors!"

  "If you ever see that man here again, and you don't have him shot or setthe dog on him, out of the house you go, neck and crop, the whole pack ofyou--do you hear!" was the reply to Elspeth's comment on the medicalprofession.

  "Just as ye say, master," said Elspeth. "I'll set Carlo at him myself, ifye say so; and wo but the brute will just worry him, for he does na likehim and is unco fond of snappin' aboot his heels!"

  "Where is Elsie?" was the next question.

  "Gone over to Mistress Hayley's the mornin'. Can I do any thing for yourleg, sir?--for the wench in the kitchen's clean daft, and I'll be wantedthere, maybe."

  "No--you can do nothing. My leg is better. But send Elsie to me the momentshe comes in."

  "Hark!" said the housekeeper, as a light foot sounded on the piazza andcame in through the hall. "There's the lassie hersel--I ken her step amonga thousand. I'll just send her in to you the moment she has thrawn aff herbonnet." And the old woman departed on her errand.<
br />
  There must have been an acuteness beyond nature, in the ears of oldElspeth, if she indeed knew the tread of the young girl; for her step, asshe entered the room, was so slow, laggard and lifeless, so unlike theusual springing rapidity of her girlish nature, that even her lover mighthave been pardoned for failing to recognize it. It was as if some crushingweight fettered her limbs and bowed down her brow. And a crushing weightindeed rested upon her--the first unendurable grief of her young life--theknowledge of her only brother's shame. Robert Brand marked the slow stepand saw the downcast head; and little as he could possibly know of theconnection of that demeanor with the subject of his previous thought, itwas not of that cheerful and reassuring character calculated to restore thelost equanimity of a man insulted in the tenderest point of his honor andchafed beyond human endurance. His first words were rough and peremptory:

  "Why do you move in that manner, girl, when you come to see _me_? I do notlike it--do not let me see any more of it!"

  "I was coming, father!" was poor Elsie's only answer.

  "So I see--at the rate of ten feet an hour! What is the matter with you?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?--do not tell me that, girl! I know better, or you would nevercarry that gloomy face and move as if you were going to your grandmother'sfuneral!"

  "Indeed there is nothing the matter with me, father; but there soon willbe, if you scold me!" and the young girl, making a terrible effort to becheerful, came up to his side, put her arm around his neck and pressed herlips to his forehead with a movement so pure and fond that it might havesoftened Nero at the moment of ordering his last wholesale murder. Itpartially disarmed the pained and querulous father. He put his arm aroundthe daughter's waist, returned the pressure and seemed to be soothed for amoment by resting his head against the bosom that pressed close to him. Butthe demon that had been roused could only sleep thus temporarily. Directlyhe put her away, though not roughly, looked her full in the face, andasked:

  "Where is your brother?"

  "You know he went down to town this morning, and he has not yet come home,"was the reply, with an effort not by any means a successful one, to keepthe voice from quavering. The practised ear of the father detected thedifference between that intonation and the usual unembarrassed utterance ofhis daughter; and he naturally connected it at once with the restraint ofher manner, and noticed an evasion in her answer that might otherwise haveescaped him.

  "I know he has not come home," he said. "But that was not my question. Youhave been at Mrs. Hayley's where he spends quite as much of his time ashere. Have you seen him?"

  Elsie Brand would have given the proudest feature of her personaladornment, at that moment, to be able to lie! She saw that some undefinedanxiety with reference to her brother must have moved her father's repeatedquestions, and naturally she feared the worst--that Carlton's mad wordshad indeed been overheard, and that even in that brief space of time somemessenger of evil had travelled fast and betrayed the fatal secret. If so,the storm was about to burst on the devoted head of her brother, not theless deadly because she must bear the first brunt of its violence.Yes--Elsie Brand would almost have given her right hand to be able to lieat that moment. But her education had been as true as was her nature, andshe managed to falter out, yet more suspiciously:

  "Yes, father!"

  "And you _dared_ to trifle with me, girl, when I asked you a plainquestion?" and Robert Brand grasped his daughter by the arm so forciblythat she nearly screamed with the violent pressure, and tears did indeedstart to her eyes as she sobbed out--

  "I did not mean to trifle with you, father. I only thought--"

  "You thought that when I asked one question, I meant another, did you?" andthe face that looked upon her was set, hard and very stern. "You had betternot try the experiment again, if you do not wish to suffer for it!"

  "Oh, father!" and the young girl, enough broken before, now wept outright.But he stopped her, very roughly.

  "No bawling! not a whimper! Now listen to me. You have seen your brothersince morning--since he went down to the rendezvous."

  "Yes, father."

  "You saw him at Mrs. Hayley's."

  "Yes, father."

  "And he came there to bid Margaret good-bye, before he went away, and youare such a miserable whining school-girl that you are making all this fussabout his absence. Is that the fact? Speak!" He still held her arm, thoughhis grasp was less painful than it had been at first; and his eyes lookedupon her with such a steady, anxious, almost fearful gaze, that it wouldhave driven away the second temptation to falsehood, even had such atemptation once obtained power. There was nothing for it, at that moment,but to speak the truth so far as compelled.

  "No, father. Carlton is not going away." The last three words were utteredso low, and so tangled up among the sobs that she had not been ableentirely to check, that they might not have been distinguishable except tothe preternaturally acute ear of the suspicious father.

  "He is not going? Why?" The first words were harsh and loud--the last onewas almost thunder, easily heard, if any one was listening, over the wholehouse. Before it the young girl shook like an aspen and broke out intofresh sobs as she attempted to answer.

  "Because--because his business will not allow--"

  "Because he is _a coward!_ Answer me that question, girl, or never speak tome again while you live!" Robert Brand had apparently forgotten all hispain and risen from his chair, still holding his daughter's arm, as hehurled out the interrogation and the threat. Poor Elsie saw that he knewall, too surely; further dissembling was useless; and she dropped upon herknees, that iron grasp still upon her arm, lifted up both her hands, andpiteously moaned--

  "Yes, that is the reason! Oh, how did you hear it? Kill _me_, father, ifyou will, but do not kill poor Carlton! He cannot help it--indeed hecannot!"

  They were fearful words that immediately thereafter fell from the lips ofRobert Brand--words that no provocation should ever tempt a father toutter, but words which have been plentifully showered on the heads of theshamed or the disobedient, by the thoughtless or the unmerciful, whoarrogated to themselves God's power of judgment and retribution, throughall the long ages.

  "Get up, girl, if you do not wish me to forget that you are not yourselfthe miserable hound for whom you are pleading!"

  "Oh, father!" broke again from the lips of the frightened girl, who did notmove from her kneeling position.

  "Get up, I say, or I will strike you with this cane as I would a dog!"

  Elsie Brand staggered to her feet, she knew not how, but stood bowed beforethe stern judge in an attitude of pleading quite as humble and pitiful asthat of prayer. The next words that fell upon her ears were not addressedto her, but seemed to be spoken for others' hearing than those who dwell intenements of clay, while the voice that uttered them trembled in mingledgrief and indignation, and the disabled frame shook as if it had beenracked with palsy.

  "_My_ son a coward! a miserable poltroon to be pointed at, spat upon, andwhipped! _My_ blood made a shame in the land, by the one whom I trusted tohonor it! God's blackest and deepest curse--"

  "Oh, father! father!" broke in the young girl in a very wail of agony sopitiful that it must have moved any heart not calloused for the momentagainst all natural feeling, but that availed nothing to stop the impendingcurse or even to lower the voice that uttered it.

  "--God's deepest and blackest curse 'light upon the coward! shame, sorrow,and quick death! He shall have neither house, home nor family from thismoment! I disown this bastard of my blood! I devote him to ruin and toperdition!"

  Few men have ever uttered, over the most criminal and degraded of theoffspring of their own loins, so dire an imprecation; and no father, whohas ever uttered one approaching it in horrible earnest, but is doomed hereor hereafter to feel the bitterest weight of that curse resting upon hisown head. Lear was clean distraught by wrongs beyond human endurance,before he called upon "all the stored vengeances of heaven" to fall on the"ingrateful top" of Goneri
l, and threatened both his unnatural daughterswith "such revenges" that they should be the "terrors of the earth"; andonly that incipient madness clears him from the sin and leaves him human todemand our after pity. There can be no excuse for such paroxysms ofremorseless anger--it is difficult to supply even a palliation. And yetthere was something in the blood, in the past life and associations ofRobert Brand, coming as near to offering excuse for shame and indignationdriving to temporary madness, as could well have been offered in behalf ofany man of his day, committing a sin of such nature. And to circumstancesembodying these it is now necessary to revert, even at the expense of atemporary pause in the directness of this narration.