"Neil, my dear lad, your letter set our old hearts singing. How did you manage it? Who helped you?"
"God and Jacob Cohen helped me," he answered. "The Jew has bought my land in Mill Street, and the strange thing is that he bought it out of respect and sympathy for my father. I am as sure of that as I am that Jacob Cohen is the only Christian in New York who remembered us for past kindness or cared for us in present trouble. I want to rest an hour, mother; I have an appointment with Lord Medway at five o'clock, and I feel like a leaf that has been blown hither and thither by the wind for two days. You might tell Maria that Agnes CHAPTER VIII.
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Bradley's brother will be outside of New York, a free man, in an hour."
"I am glad he is out o' our life, anyway. Much sorrow and loss he has brought us, and you will see that Maria's good name will be none the better for being mixed up with the affair."
"That is Macpherson's fault. For her sake, and for your sake, he might have held his tongue. I will not forgive him."
"His duty, Neil----"
"Nonsense! He could have given the information without bringing in Maria's name. He was mad with wounded vanity, it was a miserable, cowardly bit of revenge."
"I don't think he is a coward."
"He is; any man is a coward who takes his spite out on a woman, and you have been so kind, so motherly to him. He is a disgrace to the tartan: but I want an hour's rest, and tell father to be perfectly easy about the money. I shall have it in the morning. It rests on Cohen's word; I know no better human security."
"Are you not hungry?"
"I had dinner with the Cohens, a simple, excellent meal."
"The world is tapsalteerie; I wonder at nothing that happens. Did you see the young man? I mean Bradley's son?"
"Not I. I did not want to see him. I heard the drums and got out of sight and hearing as quickly as possible. I believe his father has managed the affair very wisely; I should not wonder if the rogue's march turns out more of a triumph than an ignominy."
In a measure Neil's judgment proved to be correct. Respectable young men, charged to discountenance riotous abuse, began to join the procession at its outset, and this element was continually augmented. As they passed Bradley's shop, Bradley himself stepped out of it and walking at the head of the line, took his place at Harry's right hand. No one interfered. The drummers and fifers in front did not see him, and the stupid Waldeckers, ignorant of English and of everything but the routine of their regiment, took him as a part of the event. He was dressed in black cloth, with a white lawn band around his neck, and if they speculated about him at all, they thought he was a clergyman, and concluded the prisoner was to be hung at the barrier.
[Illustration: THE DRUMMERS AND FIFERS IN FRONT DID NOT SEE HIM.]
But Harry turned to his father a face full of love and gratitude. The youth's self-control was complete, for his disdain of the whole proceeding was both breastplate and weapon to him. He was bare-headed and with the wind in his hair and the sunlight in his eyes he went swinging onward to the song of victory he heard in his own heart. By the side of his father's massive contour and stern countenance, Harry looked like some young Michael, bright-faced and fearless.
Now and then a taunt was hurled at the lad, and occasionally a jibe far more tangible, but of neither missile did he show the least consciousness. The presence of his father touched the rudest heart. He removed his hat when he saw his son's uncovered head, and his grey hairs evoked far more pity than contempt. When they passed through the fashionable residence streets, the sympathy was even remarkable; windows were thrown up, handkerchiefs fluttered, and now and then a shrill little "bravo!" made Harry look up and catch the influences of pity and admiration that women, young and lovely, and women, old and wayworn, rained down CHAPTER VIII.
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on him. As Medway predicted, the crowd melted away long before the barrier was reached, for the mood of mischief was not in it. The fifes screamed and the drums beat, but could not summon the devilish spirit of mob violence, and Harry Bradley's tramp to the Rogue's March was a much more quiet and orderly affair than the Police Court intended it to be.
At the barrier the gate was flung open, and, in the midst of a fanfaronade of discordant sounds and scornful shouts Harry was hustled outside. But his father had found opportunity to give him gold and to tell him a negro was waiting with a swift horse behind the gates; and just at the last moment, amid the scoffing and jeering of the soldiers, he put his arms about his son's neck and kissed and blessed him. He had drunk the shameful cup to the dregs with the lad, and he turned to the little gathering a face that awed them. As one man they moved aside to let him pass, and for a few moments watched him, as, with a mighty stride he took the road homeward. For he looked beyond his nature large and commanding, and he walked as if moved by some interior force that was beyond his control. Men gazed at him with awe and pity, but no one ventured to speak to him.
As he approached his home the inner momentum that had carried him without let or hinderance at a marvelous speed seemed to fail; he faltered, looked round wearily, and then stumbled forward, as if he had charged his spirit for the last mile of life. When he reached his gate he could not open it, and Agnes ran out to help him; speech was impossible, but with a pitiful glance he let her lead him into the house. Leaning on her, he stumbled forward until he reached the sofa, then, with a great cry he fell backward.
Fortunately, Neil Semple at that moment entered the house, and he was instantly at Bradley's side, rendering, with Agnes, the help at once necessary, and soothing the afflicted man with words of such sympathy and affection as few mortals had ever heard pass the lips of Neil Semple. "Mr. Bradley," he entreated, "do not fail yourself at this hour! We are all so sorry for you--all ready to weep with you--think of Agnes--are you suffering?--Shall I go for a physician? What is the matter? Speak to me, Mr. Bradley."
"Sir," he answered, stretching out his trembling arms, "sir, I can neither see nor hear."
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CHAPTER IX.
THE TURN OF THE TIDE.
Every misfortune has its horizon, but as yet Maria was not able to lift up her eyes and see any comfort coming from afar. It seemed to her that all the joy and glory of living was over. It was not only that Harry was taken out of her schemes of happiness for the future; the present, also, was denuded of every hope and clouded by very real annoyances. She felt bitterly the publicity given to her name, and she knew that this publicity would supply those who disliked her with continual opportunities for her humiliation.
"I shall have to stop at home," she thought; "and grandmother is sick and grandfather fretful, and Neil's whole care is given to Agnes Bradley. I think he might consider me a little; but nobody does; I am only Maria. Yet my life is ruined, quite ruined;" and the unhappy child wept over herself and wondered how she was to live through the long, long years before her.
Very frequently, however, this tearful mood gave place to indignation against her friends in general, and Agnes in particular. For she still held steadily to the opinion that all the trouble had arisen from her selfishness and inability to remember any one's desires but her own. And so, in plaintive or passionate wandering from one wrong to another, she passed some very miserable days. Finally, Neil persuaded her to go and see Agnes.
He said, "Even the walk may do you good; and Agnes is certain to have some comforting words to say."
Maria doubted both assertions. She could not see what good it could do her to go from one wretched house to another even more wretched, and Neil's assurances that John Bradley was better and able to go to his shop did not give her any more eager desire to try the suggested change. Yet to please Neil she went, though very reluctantly; and Madame sympathized with this reluctance. She thought it was Agnes Bradley's place to come and make some acknowledgment of the sorrow and loss her family had brought upon the Semples; and she recalled the innate aversion the Elder had always felt for the Bradley family.
"The soul kens which way trouble can come," she said. "But what is the good o' its warnings? Nobody heeds them."
"I never heard any warning, grandmother."
"There's nane so deaf as those who won't hear; but go your ways to your friend Agnes! I'll warrant she would rather you would bide at hame."
The morning was cold and damp and inexpressibly depressing, but Maria was in that mood which defies anything to be of consequence. She put on her hat and cloak and walked silently by her uncle's side until they came to the Bradley cottage. All the prettiness of its summer and autumn surroundings was blighted or dead; the door shut, the window covered, the whole place infected by the sorrow which had visited it. Agnes opened the door. She was wan and looked physically ill and weary, but she smiled brightly at her visitor, and kissed her as she crossed the threshold.
"My father has been very ill, Maria, or I should have been to see you before this," she said; "but he has gone to the shop this morning. I fear he ought not."
"My grandfather has been very ill and is still unable to leave his room," replied Maria. "My dear grandmother also! As for myself--but that is of little importance, only I must say that it has been a dreadful thing to happen to us, a cruel thing!"
"It was a wrong thing to begin with. That is where all the trouble sprang from. I see it now Maria."
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"Of course! You ought not to have deceived your father, Agnes."
"I was to blame in that, very much to blame. I have nearly broken my heart over the sin and its consequences."
"Consequences! Yes, for they fell upon the innocent--that is what you ought to be sorry for--my grandfather and grandmother, my Uncle Neil, and even myself."
"But as for yourself, Maria, you also were to blame. If you would have been content with seeing Harry here----"
"Oh, indeed! You did not permit me to see Harry here, or even to bid him good-bye that night. If you had----"
"It would have made no difference. Harry as well as you seemed willing to run all risks to meet--elsewhere."
"I never thought of meeting Harry elsewhere. I have told you this fact before."
"If you had not done so, if Harry had not known you would do so again, he would not have asked you."
"This is the last time I will condescend to tell you, Agnes, that I never once met Harry by appointment; much less, at nine o'clock at night. Please remember this!"
"It is, then, very strange, that Harry should have asked you that night."
"Not only very strange, but very impertinent. Why should he suppose Maria Semple would obey such a command? For it was a command. And it was a further impertinence to send me this command on a bit of common paper, wrapped around a stone and thrown at me through a window. It was a vulgar thing to do, also, and I never gave Harry Bradley the smallest right to order me to meet him anywhere."
"Oh, if you look at things that way! But why did he ask you? That is a question hard to answer."
"Not at all. He was jealous of Macpherson and wished to show off his familiarity with me and make Macpherson jealous. Under this distracting passion he forgot, or he did not care, for the risk. It was your selfishness put the idea into his head, and it was his selfishness that carried it out, regardless of the consequences."
"And your selfishness, Maria, what of it?"
"I was not selfish at all. I knew nothing about it. If I had received the note, I should not have answered it in any way."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Absolutely sure. It angered me, humiliated me, wronged me beyond words. And to have it read in the Police Court! How would you feel, Agnes? It has ruined my life."
"Poor Harry!"
"Oh, but poor Maria! All this misery was brought to me without my knowledge and without any desert on my part. And don't you suppose I love my grandparents and Uncle Neil? Think what I have suffered when I saw them dragged to prison, tried, fined and disgraced, and all for a scribble of presumptuous words that Harry Bradley ought to have been ashamed to write. It was very thoughtless, it was very cruel."
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"Harry suffered for his presumption; and as for the fine, my father will repay it to your grandfather. He said so this morning; said it would only be just; and I think so, too."
"The fine is the least part of the wrong. Who can repay grandfather and uncle for the loss of their good name and their honorable record? Who can give uncle his business back again? These are wrongs that cannot be put right with money. You know that, Agnes."
"Do not quarrel with me, Maria. I am not able to bear your reproaches. Let us at least be thankful that Harry's life is spared. When the war is over you may yet be happy together."
Then Maria burst into passionate weeping. "You know nothing Agnes! You know nothing!" she cried. "I can never see Harry again! Never, never! Not even if he was in this house, now. How do you suppose he was saved?"
"Father has a great deal of influence, and he used it." Her calm, sad face, with its settled conviction of her father's power, irritated Maria almost beyond endurance. For a moment she thought she would tell her the truth, and then that proud, "not-caring," never far away from a noble nature stayed such a petty retaliation. She dried her eyes, wrapped her cloak around her, and said she "must not stop longer; there was trouble and sorrow at home and she was needed."
Agnes did not urge her to remain, yet she could not bear her to leave in a mood so unfriendly, and so despairing. "Forgive me, dear Maria," she whispered. "I have been wrong and perhaps unkind. I fear you are right in blaming me. Forgive me! I cannot part in such misunderstanding. If you knew all----"
"Oh, yes! And if you knew all."
"But forgive me! God knows I have suffered for my fault."
"And I also."
"Put your arms around my neck and kiss me. I cannot let you go feeling so unkindly to me. Do you hear, little one? I am sorry, indeed I am. Maria! Maria!"
Then they wept a little in each other's arms, and Maria, tear stained and heavy hearted, left her friend. Was she happier? More satisfied? More hopeful, for the interview? No. There had been no real confidence. And what is forgiveness under any circumstances? Only incomplete understanding; a resolution to be satisfied with the wrong acknowledged and the pain suffered, and to let things go.
Certainly, nothing was changed by the apparent reconciliation; for as Maria sat by the fire that night she said to herself, "It is her fault. If she had given Harry five minutes, only five minutes, that night he never would have written that shameful note. It came of her delay and his hurry. I do not forgive her, and I will not forgive her! Besides, in her heart I know she blames me; I, who am perfectly innocent! She has ruined my life, and she looked as injured as if it was I who had ruined her life. I was not to blame at all, and I will not take any blame, and I will not forgive her!"
Maria's divination in the matter was clearly right. Agnes did blame her. She was sure Harry would not have written the note he did write unless he had received previous encouragement. "There must have been meetings in the Semples's garden before," she mused. "Oh, there must have been, or else Harry's note was inexcusable, it was impertinence, it was vulgarity. All the same, she need not have said these words to me."
So the reconciliation was only a truce; the heart-wound in both girls was unhealed; and if it were healed would not the scar remain forever?
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Three or four days after this unsatisfactory meeting Neil came home in the afternoon just as the family were sitting down to the tea-table. "It is cruelly cold, mother," he said. "I will be grateful for a cup. I am shivering at my very heart." Then he gave his father a business-like paper, saying, "I found it at my office this morning, sir."
"What is it Neil? What is it? More trouble?"
"No, sir. It is a deed making over to you the property in which Mr. Bradley has his shop and workrooms. He says in a letter to me that 'he feels this deed to be your right and his duty.' You are to hold the property as security until he pays you three hundred pounds with interest; and if you are not paid within three years you are to sell the property and satisfy yourself."
"You can give Mr. Bradley his deed back again, my lad. I can pay my own fines; or if I can't, I can go to prison. I'll not be indebted to him."
"You mistake, sir. This is a moral obligation, and quite as binding as a legal one to Mr. Bradley."
"Take the paper, Alexander," said Madame, "and be thankfu' to save so much out o' the wreck o' things. We havena the means nor the right, these days, to fling awa' siller in order to flatter our pride. In my opinion, it was as little as Bradley could do."
"I went at once to his shop to see him," continued Neil, "but he was not there. In the afternoon I called again, and found he had been absent all day. Fearing he was sick, I stopped at his house on my way home. A strange woman opened the door. She said Mr. Bradley and his daughter had gone away."
"Gone away!" cried Maria. "Where have they gone? Agnes said nothing to me about going away."
"The woman, Mrs. Hurd, she called herself, told me Agnes did not know she was to leave New York until fifteen minutes before she started."
"When will they return?" asked Madame.
"God knows," answered Neil, going to the fire and stooping over it. "I am cold and sick, mother," he said. "It was such a shock. No one at the shop expected such an event; everything was as busy as possible there, but the house! the house is desolate."
"When did they go, Neil?"
"Last night, mother, at eleven o'clock. Mr. Bradley came in about twenty minutes before eleven, put Mr. and Mrs. Hurd in possession, and told Agnes to pack a change of clothing for herself in a leather saddlebag he gave her. There was a boat waiting for them, and they went away in the darkness without a word. O Agnes!"
"What did the Hurds say?"
"They know nothing."
"Did Agnes leave no letter?" asked Maria, looking with pitying eyes at her uncle.
"How could she? The poor child, how could she? She had no time. Some one had taken away her pens and pencils. She left a message with Mrs. Hurd. That was all."
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disappeared as completely as a stone dropped into the river. No one had suspected his intention; not his foreman, nor any of the fifteen men working in his shop; not his most intimate friends, not even his daughter.
But it was at once surmised that he had gone to the rebel army. People began to murmur at the clemency shown to his son, and to comment on the almost offensive sympathy of the father for him. For a few days John Bradley was the absorbing topic of conversation; then he was forgotten by every one but Neil. His shop, indeed, was kept open by the foreman, under control of the government, but the name of Bradley was removed from above its entrance and the royal cipher G. R. put in its place. And in a few weeks his home was known as Hurd's place, and had lost all its little characteristics. Neil passed it every day with a heavy heart.
There was no sweet face at the window to smile him a greeting; no beautiful woman to stand with him at the gate, or, hand in his hand, lead him into the little parlor and with ten minutes' conversation make the whole day bright and possible. The house looked forlorn; fire or candlelight were never visible, and he could only think of Agnes as driven away in the dark night by Destiny and wandering, he knew not where.
Maria, too, was unhappy. Her last visit to Agnes had been such a mockery of their once loving companionship. Her last visit! That word "last" took hold of her, reproached her, hurt her, made her sorry and anxious. She felt also for her uncle, who looked old and gray in his silent sorrow. Poor Neil! he had suffered so many losses lately; loss of money, loss of business, loss of friends, and to crown all these bereavements, the loss of the woman on whom he had fixed the love and light and hopes of his life. No wonder he was so mournful and so quiet; he, who had just begun to be really happy, to smile and be gracious and pleasant to every one, yes, and even to sing! Madame could not help noticing the change. "He is worse than ever he was before," she said with a weary pity. "Dear me! what lots of sorrow women do manage to make!"
This remark Maria did not approve of, and she answered it with some temper. "All this sorrow came from a man's hand, grandmother," she said, "and no woman is to blame."
"Not even yoursel', Maria?"
"I, least of all. Do you think that I would have met any man by the river side at nine o'clock at night?"
"I'll confess I have had my doubts."
"Then you ought to say, 'Maria, I am sorry I have had one doubt of you.' When you were Janet Gordon, would you have done a thing like that?"
"Not a man in Scotland could have trysted me at an hour when all my folk were in their rooms and maybe sleeping."
"Not a man in America could make such a tryst with me. I am your granddaughter."
"But that letter, Maria."
"It was a shame! A wrong I cannot forgive. I called it an impertinence to Agnes, and I feel it so. He had no reason to suppose I would answer such a request, such an order, I may say. I am telling you the truth, grandmother."
"I believe you, Maria; but the pity of it is that you canna advertise that fact."
"I know that. I know that everyone will doubt me or shun me. I shall be made to suffer, of course. Well, I can suffer and smile as well as any woman,--we all have that experience at some time or other."
"Men have it, too. Look at your uncle."
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"Men don't smile when they suffer; they don't even try to. Uncle suffers, any one can see that, but he does not dress up in velvet and silk, and laugh, and dance, and talk nonsense merrily over the grave where all his hopes are buried. No, indeed! He looks as if he had lost the world. And he shuts himself in his room and swears at something or somebody; he does not cry like a woman and get a headache, as well as a heartache; he swears at his trouble and at everything connected with it. That is the way with men, grandmother, you know it is. I have heard both my grandfather and my uncle comforting themselves after this fashion. Grandfather, I thought, even seemed to enjoy it."
Madame smiled and then admitted "men had their ain ways, and so couldna be judged by woman's ways."
Moreover, she told Maria in regard to Agnes that a friendship which had begun to decay was best cut off at once. And Maria, in spite of certain regrets, felt this to be a truth. Things were not the same between Agnes and herself; it was, then, more comfortable that they should not be at all.
Only, as day after day went by and no one took the place of Agnes or showed the slightest desire to do so, her life became very monotonous. This was specially remarkable, because New York was at a feverish point of excitement. General Clinton was hurrying his preparations for the reduction of the South. Any hour the troops might get marching orders, and every entertainment had the gaiety and the melancholy of a farewell feast. All day long troops were moving hither and thither, and orderlies galloping in every direction. There was a constant rumble of army wagons in motion; trumpets were calling men together, drums beating them to their stations; and through all the blare and movement of a great military town in motion there was the tinkling of sleigh-bells and the glancing of splendidly caparisoned sleighs, full of women brilliantly dressed.
Now, although the Semple house was beyond the actual throng and tumult of these things, Maria heard the confused murmur of their activity; and Neil told her bare facts, which she easily clothed with all the accessories of their existence and movement. But although there were dinner parties and sleighing parties, nightly dances, and the promise of a fine theatrical season, with the officers of the army as actors, no one remembered her. She was shocked when she realized that she had been cut off from all social recognition.
Setting aside the fact that Harry Bradley was a rebel, she had done nothing to deserve such ostracism; but, though conscious of her innocence, she did not find this inner approval as satisfying a compensation for outward respect and pleasant company as it is supposed to be.
As the days went on, she began to wonder at Lord Medway's absence. At least, if she was to be his wife he ought to show her some care and attention. She remembered that in their last important interview she had told him not to trouble her; but he ought to have understood that a woman's words, in such trying circumstances, meant much less or much more than their face value.
Household anxieties of all kinds were added to these personal ones. Madame Semple was sick and full of domestic cares. Never had there been known in New York such bitter frost, such paralyzing cold. Snow lay four to six feet deep; loaded teams or galloping cavalry crossed the river safely on its solid ice. Neil had made arrangements for wood in the summer months, but only part of it had been delivered; the rest, though felled, could not be extricated from the frozen snowdrifts. The sale of the Mill Street property had left them a margin of ready money, but provisions had risen to fabulous prices and were not always procurable at any price. New York was experiencing, this cruel winter, all the calamities of a great city beleaguered both by its enemies and the elements.
Yet the incessant social gaiety never ceased. Thousands were preparing for the battlefield; thousands were dying in a virulent smallpox epidemic; thousands were half-frozen and half-fed; the prisons were crowded hells of unspeakable agonies; yet the officers in command of the city, and the citizens in office, the rich, the young and the beautiful, made themselves merry in the midst of all this death and famine, and found very good recreation in driving their jingling sleighs over the solid waters of the river and the bay.
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cheerfully, but his heart was heavy with anxious fear; and when he saw those he loved deprived of any comfort, he reproached himself for the pride which had made him resign offices so necessary for their welfare. This pinch of poverty, which he must conceal, made his whole being shrink with suffering he never named to any one. And besides, there was always that desolate house to pass and repass. How was it that its shut door affected him so painfully? He could only feel this question; he could not answer it. But, though he was not conscious of the fact, never had Neil Semple in all his life been at once so great and so wretched: great because he was able to put his own misery under the feet of those he loved; to forget it in noble smiles that might cheer them and in hopeful words, often invented for their comfort.
One day as he was walking down Broadway he saw a sleigh coming toward him. It was drawn by four black horses blanketed in scarlet, glittering with silver harness and tossing their plumed heads to the music of a thousand bells. As it drew nearer a faint smile came to his lips. He saw the fantastically-dressed driver and footman, and the brilliant mass of color surrounded by minever furs, and he knew it was Madame Jacobus, out to defy any other sleigh to approach her.
He expected only a swift, bright smile in passing, but she stopped, called him imperatively, and then insisted that he should take a seat beside her. "I have caught you at last," she said with a laugh. "It is high time. I asked you to come soon and see me, and you said you would. You have broken your word, sir. But nothing is binding where a woman is concerned; we have to live on broken scraps of all kinds, or perish. You are going to dine with me. I shall take it very ill if you refuse;" then, more soberly, "I have some important things to say to you."
"It will be a great pleasure to dine with you," answered Neil.
"First, however, we will gallop a mile or two, just to show ourselves and get an appetite;" and the grave smile of pleasurable assent which accepted this proposition delighted her. In and out of the city ways they flew, until they reached the Bowery road; there they met the sleighs of generals and governors, dandy officers and wealthy commissioners, and passed them all. And Neil shared the thrill of her triumph and the physical delight of a pace no one could approach. Something like his old expression of satisfied consideration came into his face, and he was alive from head to feet when he reached Madame's fine house in lower Broadway,--a handsome, luxurious house, filled with treas