CHAPTER X.
BEFORE AND AFTER GETTYSBURGH--THE APATHY AND DESPAIR WHICH PRECEDED, AND THE JUBILATION WHICH FOLLOWED--WHAT KITTY HOOD SAID AFTER THE BATTLE, AND WHAT ROBERT BRAND--BROTHER AND SISTER--A GUEST AT THE FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL--A FIRE-ROOM VISIT, AN INTERVIEW, AND A DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE.
It was a dark day for the nation--perhaps none darker!--that day of lateJune, 1863, marked by the occurrence of the preceding events. Privateinterests, private wrongs, private sorrows seemed all to be culminating orlaying down fearful material for culmination in the future; but thosedomestic convulsions were only a faint and feeble type of that great throeagitating the whole nation. That day the bravest feared, not for themselvesbut for the country they loved; and that day the miserable trucklers whowould long before have had the republic veil its face and sink on its kneesbefore the arrogance of rebellion, begging for "peace" with dishonor,instead of demanding and enforcing victory,--that day they experienced sucha triumph as they had never before known and such as their narrow soulscould scarcely appreciate. "We told you so!" rung out from the throat ofevery "conditional loyalist," as the same paltry exultation had rung manyan age before against the unsubmitting tribunes by the mad populace whenthe Volscians threatened to devastate Rome--as it had been yelled into theears of Philip Van Artevelde and his brother defenders, when Ypres andBruges fell, and the fierce Earl of Flanders promised death to the burghersof Ghent; and there was little, except bald defiance, that loyal men couldreply. That long-boasted "invasion of the North" had come at last; andthere is always a disheartening effect in the drawing of war nearer to thedoors it has heretofore spared, even as there is always a scum among anypopulation, ready to cry "ruin!" and counsel "submission" or "compromise"when a single move in the great game of war has ended disastrously.
A more dreary spectacle than Philadelphia presented during some of the daysof that week, cannot very well be imagined. From Harrisburgh and many ofthe minor towns of the west and southwest of the State, the inhabitants hadfled by thousands to other places supposed to be less easily within reachof the enemy; and, if in a future day of peace those who at this juncturetook part with the rebellion should chance to be shamed with a reminder ofthe panic in Richmond, and the removal of the Confederate archives, afterHanover Court-House in 1862, they may very pleasantly retaliate by callingup the panic at Harrisburgh and the packing up of the Pennsylvania Staterecords, after York and Carlisle in 1863. Hundreds of wealthy personsremoved their valuables even to Philadelphia; and there is no guaranteewhatever that many of them did not make a still further removal East, whenthey could do so without attracting disagreeable attention and running thechance of after ridicule.
There seemed to be an impression just then, in fact, that there was nopower whatever to check the disciplined but half-starved and desperaterebel hordes. Even those who did not view the affair as any matter of gloomor discouragement, still believed it one of heavy loss that must besubmitted to with the best grace possible.
One of the young Philadelphia merchants was recognized by a friend, on oneof the very last days of June, knocking about the balls in thebilliard-room of the Cattskill Mountain House, and questioned by him as tothe propriety of his being away from the Quaker City at a time when soheavy a misfortune as the rebel advance to the Delaware seemed to beimpending.
"Oh," said the merchant, making an eight-shot at the same moment, "I do notsee any good that I could do by staying."
"And do you not believe that the rebels will reach Philadelphia?" asked thefriend.
"Well, yes, I rather think they will," answered the nonchalant. "I shouldnot be surprised if they should reach there to-morrow. In fact Itelegraphed to my partner from Albany, yesterday, whenever they had takenHarrisburgh to pack up the most valuable of our goods and send them to NewYork."
"And when they have taken New York?" asked the interrogator, not a littleamused at that new system of defending valuable property and the country.
"Oh," said the merchant, as he sighted another shot and made his caromwithout the tremor of a pulse--"when they take New York, as I suppose theywill in a week or two, we shall move them to Boston, and so keep on workingEast till they drive us into Canada or the Atlantic."
And this was not all a jest, by any means. The player had so telegraphed,and he more than half believed that his goods were at that time in courseof removal, while he had no thought whatever of deserting hisbilliard-table and going down to assist in defending them. He was notalone, meanwhile, in his reprehensible coolness, as history will be at somepains to record of that extraordinary crisis.
Philadelphia presented many strange spectacles on those days. Apart fromthe blowing of a brass band on every corner, the patrolling of everysidewalk by a recruiting officer with fife and drum, and the requisitenumber of human "stool-pigeons," and the exhibition of the placard beforenoted, offering every inducement in money and every plea of patriotism for"State defence,"--there were other and yet more marked indications of aperiod out of the common order even for war-time. The American and theMerchants', favorite resorts of mercantile buyers from the rural countiesof the State, were full of guests, but they lounged in the reading andsmoking-rooms, and had no thought of commercial transactions. Gold wasgoing up, its higher rate marking increased fever in the pulse of thenational patient; and yet business was almost as stagnant in the broker'soffices of Third Street as were wholesale transactions in the heavy houseson Walnut and Chestnut and Market below Second. The old Tonawanda and thestill older Saranac, lying idle at the foot of Walnut Street, their yardslank and bare as winter trees, and the ships waiting for freight thatseemed to be long in coming, found a new use in illustrating the hopelessstagnation of the city. The theatres had nearly all closed before, and thelast hurried its unprofitable season to an end. The red bricks of oldIndependence Hall seemed more dingy than ever; and those who glanced intothe hall where the great Declaration was signed in Seventy-six, at thecracked bell and the other sad reminders of a past age and a by-gonepatriotism, thought whether new masters would not claim those relics fortheir own, before many days, issuing a new manifesto of slavery from thatsecond Cradle of Liberty, while their gaunt steeds were picketed inIndependence Square. Men saw the sleepless eye of the clock look down fromthe old steeple, at night, with a helpless prayer, as if something ofprotection which had before lived in the sacred building was to be found nomore; and the bell woke many a sleeper at midnight, with its slow andmelancholy stroke, to a feeling of loss and sorrow like that which it mighthave evoked when sounding for the burial of dear friends. All day longcrowds gathered and held their place, wearily moving to and fro, but neverdispersing, in the open space in front of the historic pile; and "peace"orators, who had before been awed into silence by the threats anddemonstrations of earlier days, once more ventured treasonable harangues tosections of those crowds, while the policemen scarcely found energy enoughto disperse the hearers or arrest the disturbers. The bulletin boards werebesieged; the newspaper offices had a demand for extras unknown to theoldest inhabitant of the quiet city; and the telegraph offices, busiedalike with messages of public and private interest, had never before knownsuch a test of their capacity since Morse first set Prometheus at his newoccupation of a messenger. A few troops marched away, the Reserves (withDick Compton in their ranks) among the number; and the New York militiaregiments and some of the New Jersey troops passed through on their thirdcampaign for "home defence;" but the public mind was not reassured. Oncethere was a rumor that McClellan had been called again to the command ofthe Army of the Potomac, or at least entrusted with the defence of theState, and then the general pulse for the moment beat wildly; but theinspiriting report died away again, the non-arrival of the morning trainfrom Harrisburgh one day threw the whole city into panic, and the thoughtof successfully defending the State capital sunk lower than ever. ThePresident, who had been bespoken to meet the Loyal Leagues and raise a newflag on Independence Hall on the Fourth of July, was too busy or too muchdiscouraged, an
d would not come; and what heart lacked an excuse forsinking down when so much was threatened and so little spirit shown formeeting the great peril?
This was the week preceding the Fourth; and in that week, which closed withthe National Anniversary, what changes had taken place! The time and itsvicissitudes seemed to be an exact offset to the hopes and thedisappointments of the same period of 1862. Then, the Army of the Potomachad lain before Richmond, and the Fourth was to have seen the old flagwaving in the rebel capital. It had really seen the little General drivenback upon the James, and repulsed if not hopelessly defeated. The Fourth of1863 was to see Harrisburgh in the hands of the rebels, and the nationalcause sunken lower than it had before been since the advent of thesecession. What did it really see? Thank God for a few such hours as thoseof the close of the Fourth, in the midst of whole centuries of loss anddisappointment! All was changed--all was saved! Meade, a man of whom butfew knew any thing more, a week earlier, than that he was a brave man, agood fighting General, and a brother of the overslaughed Captain DickMeade, of the North Carolina--Meade had arisen in doubt and culminated inglory. Bloodiest and most important of all the battles of the Continent,Gettysburgh stood already upon the pages of the National history, soakedwith the blood of the bravest--holy with the bravery and the energy whichhad there broken and rolled back the tide of invasion, and yet to be holierstill as the Cemetery of the Battle-Dead of the Republic. Orators who begantheir Fourth of July addresses with only their pulses of anxiety stirred bythe knowledge that there had been three days fighting, that Reynolds waskilled, and that the conflict seemed to have been desperate and undecided,did not close them before they knew that the great victory was won, thatMeade was to be thenceforth a name of honor in the land, that Lee and hishordes were in disastrous retreat, and that the "invasion of the North" wasat an end for all the time covered by this struggle. The news of Vicksburgwas soon to come, another crowning glory for the Fourth, though not knownfor days after, and Grant was to be a third time canonized. But just thenthere was enough without Vicksburg, and the nation might have gone mad overthe double tidings had they come at once.
Who, that has one drop of patriotic blood surging in his heart, can everforget the reading of those "victory extras" that flew wide over the landon Saturday night and Sunday morning--the quavering voices of the readers,the reddening cheeks and flashing eyes of the hearers? Never before did somuch seem to have been won, because never before did so much seem to havebeen perilled. And Philadelphia, that had sunken lowest in despondency ofany of the great cities, naturally rose highest when the word of victorycame. Bells rung, flags waved, music sounded, gas blazed like the noonday,processions paraded, business revived as if Trade had a human form and acrushing weight had suddenly been lifted from its breast, and oldIndependence Hall once more boomed its bell and flashed over the city itsmidnight eye of fire, as if its defiance to tyranny and treason had neverfaltered for a moment.
It was of Gettysburgh that Kitty Hood had been reading, at her littlecottage home near the great road, after her return from church on Sundaythe fifth of July, when she dashed away the tears of agitation and anxietythat had been gathering in her eyes, and said:
"Dick Compton was right, after all, and I was a fool to try to keep himaway! If he had obeyed me, I should have despised him now; and if he hasnot been killed in that terrible battle and lives to come home again, Iwill tell him how wrong I was, and what a ninny I made of myself, and howsorry I am for every word I spoke that day, and how much better I love himbecause he obeyed the call of his country instead of the poor, weak,miserable voice of a frightened woman!"
And it was of Gettysburgh and the desperate fighting around Cemetery Hillthat Robert Brand had been reading, on the same Sunday afternoon, sittingin the shade of his own piazza, when he hurled out these bitter words,which poor little Elsie heard as she lay upon the lounge in the parlorwithin:
"This is what he has lost, the low-lived, contemptible poltroon! _My son_,and to shirk a great battle! He might have been dead now, and in a gravebetter than any house in which he can ever hide his miserable life; or hemight have had something to remember and boast of all his days--that he wasone of the Men of Gettysburgh! If I had two legs, I would go out and findhim yet and shoot him with my own hand--the infernal cowardly cur!"
And then the disgraced and irate father tried to forget his son and to buryhimself in other details of the great battle.
The sister did not reply aloud to her father's renewed objurgation. Shemerely sobbed a little and took from her bosom a crumpled note and read itover again for perhaps the fiftieth time, muttering low as she did so:
"Oh, father, father! If you knew how far you would need to go to seek poorCarlton and make him even more miserable than he is, and how little chanceyou have of ever seeing him again while you live--perhaps you would notspeak so cruelly of him." Then she kissed the crumpled note again and putit back into her bosom, and tried to compose herself once more to thatsleep which the tropical heat invited and her aching heart forbade.
From the tone of that letter, it would seem that Elsie had written to herbrother, to his place of business in the city, when fully aware of theunreasonable indignation which moved her father, advising him not to riskserious personal insult by coming home until he should again hear fromher,--and that he had replied, from a place much farther away, informingher of his intention to put seas between himself and the eyes of all whohad looked upon his disgrace. But better even this long separation--thoughtthe young girl--than a return which would induce words between father andson, never to be forgiven or forgotten while either held life and memory.Years might mellow the recollection and change the feeling--years when thecountry should no longer make demands upon her children to breast thebattle storm in her behalf, and when the eloquent voice in the halls ofjustice and the active, busy life in deeds securing the common welfare,might be sufficient to win new honor and blot away any recollection of thatsingle sad misstep in the career of manhood. Poor, gentle, loving, faithfullittle Elsie Brand!--it may be long before we have occasion to look uponher again, and indeed she becomes henceforth but a comparative shadow; solet it be put upon record here that she seemed "faithful among thefaithless" in practising the great lessons of hope and charity. The fathermight utter curses to be set down against his own soul in the day whenhuman words as well as human actions must be called into judgment; friendsmight look askance and enemies gloat over the disgrace of one who hadbefore stood high above them in all the details of honorable character;even the sweetheart, whose pulses had once beaten so close to his that thetwin currents seemed flowing into one--even she might find some poor excuseof pride to falsify her by-gone boast that she loved him better than allthe world, and let that hollow, wordy "honor" work their eternalseparation: all this might be, but the _sister_ had no such license towaver in the course of her affection towards one who had been fondled bythe same hands in babyhood and drawn sustenance from the same maternalbosom as herself. And no treason, all this, to the truths and theeternities of other loves. All other relations may sooner change than thatwhich binds sister and brother, whose fondness has not been tainted by somefalsehood in blood or chilled by some wrong in education. Wife or mistress,yesterday cold, may be to-day throbbing with the most intense warmth ofabsorbing passion, and to-morrow chilled again by instability in herself orunworthiness in the object of her regard: even the mother, that tenderestfriend of song and story and sometimes of real life, may scatter heraffections wide among so many children that each has but the pauper'sshare, or form new ties and forget that ever the old existed. But thebrother, if he be not the veriest libel upon that sacred name, clings withundying fondness to the sister; and the sister, ever faithful, clings tothe brother "through evil and through good report," when one or even bothmay have become a scoff and a bye-word in every mouth that opens to speaktheir names. Happy those men for whom the bond has never been either frayedor broken: sad for those who ever look back through the long years and seesome sunny head of chi
ldhood hiding itself beneath the falling clods of thechurch-yard, that might have nestled closer to them in after years than allwhom they have grasped, and cherished, and chilled, and lost!
It now becomes necessary to inquire the whereabouts of Carlton Brand, thesubject of so much sisterly love and so much fatherly indignation, at thatsecond period when Gettysburgh was a glorious novelty, its bloody splendorsflashing broad over the loyal States. And those whereabouts may veryreadily be discovered. On the register of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in thecity of New York, his name had been inscribed on the Wednesday eveningprevious to Gettysburgh (the first day of July); and those among ourreaders who may have chanced to be sojourners at the Fifth Avenue duringthat week, and who will take the trouble to read over again the close andaccurate description given of the lawyer on his first appearance in thepresence of his sister and Margaret Hayley, in the second chapter of thisnarration, may not find much difficulty in remembering the appearance of somarked a man at the hotel at that period--the glances of admiration castupon his handsome face and manly figure as he sat at table or moved quietlyamong the ever-changing crowd in the reading-room or down the longhalls--the almost total silence which he maintained, seeming to have noacquaintances or to be anxious for escape from all conversation--hisinquiring more than once every day at the office for letters whichcontinually disappointed him--and the expression of drooping-eyedmelancholy in face and restless unquiet in movement, which gave rise tomany side remarks and led to many singular speculations.
He was alone--at least alone at the hotel; and Dr. Pomeroy, if he hadentertained any actual belief in his suggested elopement between the lawyerand his "ward," might easily have satisfied himself, had he followed him tothe commercial metropolis, that no such elopement had taken place or thatthe abductor had hidden his paramour carefully away and managed to keepcontinually out of her presence.
Something indescribably dim and shadowy grows about the character andaction of Carlton Brand at this time; and the writer, without any wish orwill to do so, yields to the necessity, very much as the proud man of theworld yields to the pressure when events which he has assumed to directgrow too mighty for his hand and bear him away in their rush andtumult,--or as a father--to use a yet stronger and more painfulimage--submits with a groan and a prayer when the child of his dear loveshuts the heart against him and breaks away from that tender control whichit has been alike his duty and his pleasure to supply. Some of our mentalchildren, especially when they are so real that time, place andcircumstance cannot be made for them at will, are sadly unmanageable; andthis instance furnishes an illustration which will be better understood ata later period. Acts may yet be recorded, while yet acts remain to record;but the heart closes, motives become buried in obscurity, and the narratorgrows to be little more than a mere insignificant, powerless chronicler ofevents without connection and actions without explanation.
Taking up his quarters at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on Wednesday, this man, onFriday, the third of July, while the city was in agonized anxiety over theconflicting accounts of Meade's first battle of the day before, and whilethe black frames for the Fourth of July fireworks were being erected infront of the City Hall in the Park, with some uncertainty in the minds ofthe workmen whether they would not be used for a pyrotechnic display overthe death-throe of the nation,--this man, Carlton Brand, took one of theomnibuses of the Fifth Avenue line passing the door of his hotel, alightedat the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway, walked down to the BowlingGreen and entered the office of the Cunard Steamships fronting that fadedrelic of the Colonial splendors of New York. When he emerged from theoffice, fifteen minutes later, the cash-box of the British and NorthAmerican Royal Mail Steamship Company was the richer by many broad piecesof American gold, and Carlton Brand bore, folded away in his wallet, one ofthose costly little pearl-white wings on which the birds of passage bearthemselves over the Atlantic. It was evident that he was about to deserthis country--that country for which he had before refused to fight,--todesert it at the very moment when its fate before God and the world seemedto hang trembling in the balance.
Coming out from the office of the Steamship Company, apparently wooed bythe breeze from the North River, the lawyer bent his steps in thatdirection as if intending to make the tour of the shipping at the piers andresume his conveyance at some point higher up the town. Past two or threeof the piers; and the dense black smoke pouring out from the funnels of oneof the transport steamers on the eve of departure for the South with troopsand munitions, seemed to attract his attention. He walked down the dock andobserved more closely the movements on and around the vessel. The blacksmoke still rolled out, and steam was hissing from the escape-valves. Heavywagons were discharging boxes at the gangway, and with much puffing andclatter a donkey-engine was hoisting them on board. A marine stood at theplank, bayonetted musket on shoulder, and close behind him an officer. Tothe civil inquiry of the lawyer, how long before the steamer would sail,the sentry replied that she was then steaming-up and would probably leavewithin a few hours; and to a request to be allowed to come on board and seethe arrangements of a government transport on the eve of sailing, theofficer, after a moment's glance at the unimpeachable dress and appearanceof the visitor, assented with the stately bow of his profession.
It certainly seemed strange that on that blazing day, when his errand atthe Hudson side of the city had been to inhale the cool breeze from theriver, Carlton Brand, within a moment after stepping on board thetransport, should have ignored all the details of decks, spars, cabins, andeven machinery, and descended the narrow stair-ways, little more thanladders, leading down to those flaming intestines of the ship from whichthe hot air crept up through the companion-ways like breaths from someroasting and agonized monster. Yet so it was; and regardless alike of theheat which fevered his lips and the greasy rails upon which he soiled hisgloves and risked the smirching of his spotless summer garments, thelawyer pressed down to the fire-room, where the stokers were sweating greatdrops of perspiration that rolled down like beads from their broiledforeheads--where the coal was rattling and crashing as it was thrownforward, then crackling and hissing at its first contact with the flame, asit was dashed into the midst of the sweltering furnaces. Down, until hestood before those mighty furnaces and caught blinding glimpses, as thefiremen momentarily opened the doors to dash in still other tons of thecrackling coal of what seemed little less than a ship's-cargo of the fuel,seething, raging and lowing in such a heat that it made the old fancy ofthe lower pit no longer a dream but a horrible present reality.
"Terrible work for hot weather, I should think," said the lawyer, when theshovels were still for a moment and the great fires raged, roared andcrackled within. He seemed to feel the necessity of saying something to doaway with the impression of his being a sulky intruder,--and was addressingone of the bronzed old stokers who had paused to wipe from his grimy browthe sweat that was actually pouring into his eyes and blinding him.
"Yes, hot enough while we are lying at the dock," answered the stoker.
"Why hotter now than at any other time?" asked the lawyer, who had probablynever happened to study that peculiar philosophy, simply because he hadnever been thrown into contact with it.
"Why? oh, Lord bless you!--because we are lying still, now, and there is nodraught. When we are going through the water, and of course through theair, the motion makes a draught and we do not more than _half_ roast."
"Then it never gets _very_ cool down here?" was the next inquiry.
"Not _very_!" answered the fireman, sententiously. "But we never have theworst of these hot fires," he continued, answering something that had notbeen spoken but that seemed to be in the face of his auditor.
"Who then?"
"The passengers--at least some of them--on board any steamer that carriesthem over sea or down the coast."
"You mean when they--when the steamers take fire and burn?" The questionwas asked in what seemed to be a hurried and troubled voice; and had notthe reflected glow from the fur
nace made every thing red under its light,there might have been seen a face of ghastly white contrasting with thedark and grimy one so near.
"No!" and the stoker laughed. "I did not mean that--only the thought of it.Steamers do not burn _very_ often--not half so often as I should think theywould, the way they are built, and with a whole Pennsylvania coal-mine onfire inside of them at once. When they do go, though, they make thingshowl! No slow burning, as there is sometimes on sailing-vessels, so thatthey can batten down the hatches and keep the fire under until there is achance of help: every thing goes in a moment, and all is over in anhour--iron steamer or wood, very little difference."
"Horrible!" said the lawyer. The word seemed forced from him, and therecould not be a doubt that he was at the moment fancying some terriblereality.
"Yes, horrible enough!" answered the stoker. "But what I was speaking of,is the foolish habit that passengers have--I have seen it often in crossingthe Atlantic--of coming down into the fire-room very soon after they start,and taking a look at the furnaces. A good many of them never sleep a winkafterwards, during the whole voyage, I believe, thinking of that mass ofred-hot coal lying in the middle of the ship, and wondering _when_ she isgoing to burn. They are fools to come down at all: if they would just keepout of the way they would never know how badly it looks, and then at leastthey would never be burned until their time came!"
Just then the raging monster within seemed to demand more blazing food,and the stoker turned away to attend to his duty. Had he remainedconversing one moment longer, he might have seen Carlton Brand totter backagainst the bulk-head of the fire-room, literally gasping for breath--thengrapple for the railing of the stairs, and ascend the steps with thestaggering motion of a sick or drunken man, breathing heavily and givingpainful indications of being on the verge of falling insensible.
When the lawyer again emerged to the air of the deck, his face was ghastlywhite, and he seemed altogether strangely altered since the moment of hisdescent into those regions of fire and grime and terrible suggestion. Whathad so changed him?--the heat, choking his lungs and preying upon a frameunaccustomed to it?--or had the curse of his nature again found him out, inthe low of the furnaces and the heedless conversation of the fireman? anddid he remember that between himself and even that flight beyond the seawhich only could shut out from his ears the voice of contempt and the cryof a neglected country, there yet lay the peril of the Amazon and theAustria?
This occurred on Friday the third of July; and between that day and theSunday following there was nothing in the movements of the sojourner at theFifth Avenue, worthy of special record. But on that Sunday afternoon,perhaps at the very hour when Kitty Hood, in one spot of that section ofcountry which had been his old home, was glorying over her lover's havingbeen at Gettysburgh,--and when Robert Brand, in another, was writhing andcursing over the absence of his son from the same great battle,--anincident took place at the hotel, apparently trivial, but which maysubsequently be found to have exercised no slight influence on the fortunesof some of the different persons named in this chronicle. Unfortunately,again, over this little event hangs a mist and a shadow, and only slightglimpses can be obtained of what afterwards proved to be of suchunsuspected importance.
On that Sunday afternoon, at about two o'clock, Carlton Brand went downfrom his room to the office of the hotel, to exchange a few words with theclerk, and to secure one of the battle-extras which he had just heard fromhis window cried in the street. Knots of men, guests, or passers-by, drivenin by the pouring rain without, filled the long hall, every third holding anewspaper, every group in more or less animated conversation, and the onetopic that great conflict which had just bloomed out into a great victory.The lawyer seemed to have company enough in his own thoughts, and did notjoin any of the groups. He secured his extra, transacted his brief businessat the desk, and returned immediately upstairs. The moment after he hadleft the desk, a young man advanced from one of the groups near the door,asked a question of the clerk, was answered, overran a few pages of theregister with eye and finger, and then passed upstairs under the guidanceof a servant.
Carlton Brand had already thrown off coat and boots again, and was sittingat the open window in dressing-gown and slippers, glancing over thesensation-headings of the extra which gave the particulars of the Waterlooof Secessia,--when there was a tap at the door. Stepping hastily thitherand opening it, with a muttered wonder why he could not be left alone tohis reading, a well-known figure stepped into the room and one of hisPhiladelphia bar-intimates--perhaps the nearest to a confidential friend inthe whole profession, took him by the hand. For an instant the occupant ofthe room seemed to be displeased at the intrusion and an expression ofannoyance flitted over his face; but old friendship was evidently toopowerful even for shame and lacerated feeling, and the next instant he hadcordially returned the grasp.
The new-comer, strangely enough, bore no slight resemblance to CarltonBrand. We say strangely, because the lawyer was by no means such a person,in general appearance, as could be readily duplicated. Henry Thornton, hisprofessional brother, had the same tall, lithe figure with evidence ofgreat agility, the same mould of countenance in many respects, and witheyes of hazel only a shade darker than Brand's. But here the resemblance,which might otherwise have been extraordinary, became slighter andeventually disappeared. His complexion was much darker, even brown, fromchin to forehead, indicating Southern blood or residence. His hair, curlinga little, was of very dark brown, almost black; and his heavy moustache,the only beard he wore, was so nearly black as generally to pass under thatdesignation. In spite of the similarity of form and feature, it may beimagined that these differences told very strongly on the general effectproduced by the two men on the mere casual observer; and while there wasthat indefinable something in the face of Carlton Brand, to which attentionhas before been called, denoting intellect and true nobility of soul,accompanied by an occasional pitiable weakness or want of self-assertion ofthe full manhood, there was that quite as plainly to be read in the face ofHenry Thornton, which told of dauntless courage and iron will, a brain busyand scheming if not even plotting, and powers which might not always beturned to the service of the candid, the open and the honorable. Lavaterwould have thought, looking at his face--Well for him and for the world ifwhat he wills is in consonance with honor and justice, for what he wills hewill pursue with the unfaltering courage of the lion and the untiringdetermination of the sleuth-hound!
But Nature, giving to these two men who held no known relationshipwhatever, so striking a resemblance in some particulars and so great adissimilarity in others--had not quite ended her freak of comparison. It isdoubtful whether either was fully aware of the fact, but the similaritybetween the tones of their voices, in ordinary times, was quite as markedas that between certain physical features; and any person standing that daywithout the door, when the two had entered into conversation, might havebeen puzzled to know whether two persons were really speaking or one wascarrying on a monologue. This, only at ordinary times: Thornton's voice wasmuch steadier and more uniform under feeling, and it never broke into tonesso low and melancholy as that of the other, when influenced by temporarydepression.
Such was Carlton Brand's visitor on that Sunday afternoon, and he it waswho but the moment after was seated in the proffered chair near the windowand chatting upon current topics with as much nonchalance as if he hadmerely called upon his entertainer at his little office on Sixth Street,Philadelphia, instead of visiting him at a hotel in a distant city.
There was a little table standing between the two windows of the room andwithin reach of Thornton as he sat. On the table lay part of thatmiscellaneous collection of articles which every careless bachelor willpersist in scattering about his room at the hotel; and at the edge of whatmay be called the pile lay a paper more than half unfolded, which caughtthe observant eye of the visitor. With a quick: "Will you allow me?" whichbrought an affirmative response, he reached over, took up the paper,unfolded it and read a receipt for a f
irst cabin passage in the Cunard MailSteamship to sail from New York to Liverpool, on the 8th July, for which$130.50 had been paid by Mr. Carlton Brand.
"The Cunarder for Liverpool next Wednesday," he said, when he had finishedrunning his eye over the passage-ticket.
"Yes," answered the owner, and he answered nothing more.
A strange expression passed over the face of his interrogator--anexpression so doubtful that even Lavater, or any other man pretending toread the human countenance like an open book, might have been puzzled tosay whether it conveyed pleasure, scorn, wonder, or any one of the thousanddifferent feelings whose outward show glints over our faces as often and astransiently as the cloud-shadows floating over the mountain woods or themottled sunshine flickering over the wheat-fields. There was somethingthere--something which the other did not appear to notice; and with thatfact we must be content.
Five minutes later, Carlton Brand, through the medium of words growing outof the discovery of the passage-ticket, was in confidential conversationwith Henry Thornton with reference to the disgrace which had driven himfrom home and must make him an exile for years if not forever. It may havebeen a serious weakness, towards one who had never been even on terms ofspeaking acquaintance with her, to talk to him of Margaret Hayley and toconfess the shameful dismissal which he had received. But Henry Thorntonknew of the Hayleys if he did not claim an acquaintance with them; he hadit in his power to impart information of them and their probable movementsduring the summer, which the other might have found difficulty in obtainingthrough any other means; and perhaps that knowledge gave some excuse forreciprocal confidence. At all events that confidence was given, and itelicited a return of apparently equal candor. Before the separation tookplace, at the end of an interview which lasted more than an hour, a strangebond seemed to have been established and cemented between the two lawyers,very different from any which official intercourse can often rivet. Thatinterview, in fact, appeared to have produced marked effects upon both, forwhile on the face of Henry Thornton, as he rose to take his farewell, therewas a look of entire satisfaction that could not have been without ameaning more or less creditable,--there was in the eye of Carlton Brandless of that troubled expression which had been for days resting there likea shadow, and he breathed as if a weight had been lifted from his breast.To one this new satisfaction and lightness of heart may have been no falsepresage: to the other, what an omen of unsuspected evil, disaster anddeath!
They parted at the door of the lawyer's room, with a much warmer grasp ofthe hand than that with which they had met little more than a hour before;and each held the palm of the other in his for a moment, as those shoulddo who have however slight a bond in common and between whom the waves of awhole wide ocean are so soon to roll.
"A pleasant voyage and a happy return!" said the one, on the threshold.
"A pleasant summer to you, wherever you are!" was the reply of the other.
So parted, after that brief meeting, Henry Thornton and Carlton Brand. Thebearer of that latter name, once so honored but now holding so doubtful aposition, left New York by the Cunarder Scotia from Jersey City onWednesday the 8th of July, looking his last that evening from the deck ofhis steamer, on the dim blue line of the Highlands--a fading speck of thatnative land that the fates had ordained he should never see again with hisliving eyes! And as at this moment we lose sight of him for the time, totrace the fortunes of others remaining on this side of the Atlantic, it maybe well to say that his outward voyage must have been a safe and prosperousone, for there was duly registered as having arrived at Liverpool, on thetwentieth of July, (a date which it may afterwards be important toremember) "Carlton Brand, Philadelphia."