Henry Morford

“ God's blackest and deepest curse—"
"Oh, father! father!" broke in the young girl in a very wail of agony so pitiful that it must have moved any heart not calloused for the moment against all natural feeling, but that availed nothing to stop the impending curse 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 this moment! I disown this bastard of my blood! I devote him to ruin and to perdition!" ”

“ It is equally sad when a woman is seen kneeling to any other power than that of her God! It seems man's province, given alike by nature and the laws of chivalry, to bend his proud knee in other aspects than that of devotion; and even when he is showing that prostration his eye may be glowing with the conscious pride of the future conqueror; but what except the most abject shame or the most overwhelming sorrow, can be shown when the delicate limb of womanhood kisses the green sod or the floor beneath her tread? ”

“ Who shall describe the feelings of Margaret Hayley as she heard the words which told her of that one bereavement beyond hope—as she heard them in those piteous tones and from that agonized father—a father no more? Absence, silence, shame, separation of heart from heart upon earth, hope against hope and fear without a name—all were closed and finished at once and forever, in that one great earthquake of fact, opening and swallowing her world of thought—dead! Tears had not yet come—the blind agony that precedes them if it does not render them impossible, was just then her terrible portion. ”

“ The inconceivable rapidity of human thought has been so often made a matter of comment, that words could but be wasted in illustrating it. It shames the lightning and makes sluggard light itself. All these thoughts in the mind of Horace Townsend scarcely consumed that time necessary to draw rein and turn himself round in the saddle in a quick attempt to alight, rush up the side of the rock and seize her horse by the bridle or swing her from her seat. He had no irresolution—no moment of hesitation—he only thought and suffered in that single instant preceding action. ”

“ A sudden break, opening upon a dark quiet little lake or tarn, was to be seen through the trees to the right; and a quarter of a mile away, hanging sheer over the gulf of more than two thousand feet sweeping down towards the foot of the Cannon—there, with the massive iron face staring full into the moonlight that touched nose and cheek and brow with so strange and doubtful a light that the unpractised eye could not trace the outlines, while the accustomed could see them almost as plainly as in the sunlight—there loomed the awful countenance of the Old Man of the Mountain. ”

“ The Pall is over every thing of earth: how sadly and how inevitably it droops above the Banner! No scene upon earth could have been more exquisitely peaceful, and few could have been lovelier, than that which surrounded and comprehended those two fair girls in their embrace upon the piazza. Wealth, youth, beauty, good feeling, happiness—all were there; and love blent with friendship, for was not the embrace, given by Elsie Brand and accepted by Margaret Hayley, both given and accepted quite as much for her brother's sake as her own? ”

“ There is no one near to hear us, and so it is almost like speaking before heaven alone. I love your brother, deeply, devotedly, with all the power of my nature—so devotedly that if that love should be wrenched away from my heart by any circumstance, I know that my life would thenceforth be but one long, wretched mockery of existence. Happy natures like yours, Elsie, do not know the absolute agony that lies in such love. ”

“ And a sadder spectacle was never presented; for while Margaret Hayley, in the father of the man she had so loved, was striving to embrace something of the dead form that never could be embraced in reality, Robert Brand was still more truly clasping a shadow—trying to find his lost son who could never come to his arms again, in the thing which had been dearest to that son while in life!
"My son is dead! Come to me; live with me; be a sister to Elsie and a daughter to me, or I shall never be able to bear my punishment!" ”

“ What he was suffering at that moment, with three or four of the most powerful passions known to humanity tearing at his heart-strings at once, none may know who have not passed through the same terrible ordeal which he was then enduring. There were only the fays who may have been playing among the green grass, and the dryads yet lingering among the whispering leaves of the maples, looking in at the end of the piazza upon his face: had they been human eyes, what of wrestling and struggle might they not have seen! ”

“ Margaret Hayley went on. "I must not, or we have no future. Do you know that I should have reverenced your brother more, even if I did not love him better, if he had not refused the commission in the army tendered him at the commencement of the war? I might have wept, perhaps mourned—but I should have idolized. Now, I only love a mortal like myself, where I might have been worshipping a hero!"
"Or sobbing over a grave!" said Elsie, with a sigh which told how easily she might have been brought to illustrate the word she used. ”

“ When Margaret Hayley, breathing the same air that Horace Townsend had breathed a few days before, and aware that she was doing so, joined to the rapt emotions of the place and the hour, something of the sad glory of human love and grief, stretching out her mental hands to God whose awful majesty stood before her and around her in the great peak lifting itself to heaven, and praying that out of darkness might some day come light, as once it had done on that other and more awful peak of Sinai. ”

“ After a time, however, the reckless fellow seemed to have grown tired of his humor; for, as the long line crossed over the peak of Prospect to Monroe, and the north wind and the sun had so driven away the clouds that the riders began to realize the glorious prospect opening upon them on every hand,—he took his place in the line, next to his deserted comrade Townsend, sat his horse like a Christian, and joined in the bursts of admiration vented on all sides, with an enthusiasm which showed that the scenery had never palled upon him by familiarity. ”

“ Years might mellow the recollection and change the feeling—years when the country should no longer make demands upon her children to breast the battle storm in her behalf, and when the eloquent voice in the halls of justice and the active, busy life in deeds securing the common welfare, might be sufficient to win new honor and blot away any recollection of that single sad misstep in the career of manhood. Poor, gentle, loving, faithful little Elsie Brand!—it may be long before we have occasion to look upon her again, and indeed she becomes henceforth but a comparative shadow ”

“ And yet—sorrow that the bitter truth must be recorded!—not a tithe of that which was to curse him before the end, has yet been indicated. Slowly and surely the blackening crimes pile up, when the love of virtue and the fear of heaven have both faded out from the human heart; and who can measure the height to which those mountain masses of guilt may tower, after the first foundations have been laid in one unrepented wrong, and before the coming of that day when the criminal must call upon those very mountains to fall and bury him away from the wrath that is inevitable! ”

“ Duelling is murder nearly always, and folly always when it is not a crime; and if I should ever be driven into another duel, be sure that it would not be with an inexperienced boy who probably does not know half so much about a pistol as at pen-knife or a tooth-pick."
"You are a true man, as well as a sensible one, and I honor you!" said the relieved lawyer, grasping him by the hand, and his face at the same time wearing a look, which, though unseen by the other, seemed actually to express personal gratitude. ”

“ It was as if some crushing weight fettered her limbs and bowed down her brow. And a crushing weight indeed rested upon her—the first unendurable grief of her young life—the knowledge of her only brother's shame. Robert Brand marked the slow step and saw the downcast head; and little as he could possibly know of the connection of that demeanor with the subject of his previous thought, it was not of that cheerful and reassuring character calculated to restore the lost equanimity of a man insulted in the tenderest point of his honor and chafed beyond human endurance. ”

“ Horace Townsend turned at that moment and looked her sidelong in the face, then withdrew his glance again as if satisfied, and she went on:
"I told you that Captain Hector Coles would never be nearer to me than he is, and he will not. I hate that man, and he knows it. But I love another!"
She paused, as if she expected some outburst at this declaration; but no outburst came. All the effect it produced was a quick shudder through the arm that sustained her hand.
"I love another—do you hear me? I who say that I love you, say that I love another! ”

“ If she has learned to suspect me—I know her brave heart and her proud nature—I shall lose her, the richest, noblest thing on earth, half grasped, to be mourned for as never man yet mourned for woman! Do help me, Elsie! Help me to conceal my shame—to deceive her, yes—God help me!—to deceive her before whom my very soul should be laid bare—so that she will not know me for the miserable wretch and coward that I am! ”

“ Philip," said the Quaker, his words still slow and no point of the sectarian idiom lost, but each dropping short and curtly as if a weighty substance falling heavily. "But thee will understand me before I am done. Thee wrote me a letter, signed 'A True Friend'—"
"You lie!" A terrible word, to be flung into the teeth of any man; and doubly terrible as hurled from lips then ashy white. For just one instant the Quaker's large hands clutched, and he might have been moved to advance upon his insulter and avenge Eleanor Hill, himself and all the world, by choking the insult from his throat. ”

“ Such words of unmistakable anxiety and fondness the insensible man might have been willing to peril another life to hear; and they were uttered, let it be remembered, when she, however the others may have been alarmed, had no idea that he was dying or in danger, and more as if she wished to pour out a great truth of her nature and be relieved of its weight, than with any other apparent thought in view. Oh, that ideal! Oh, love of woman, a moment checked in its first course, to break away again from all bounds and more than redouble its early madness! ”

“ Some of the words of that meeting are too sacred to be given: let them be imagined with the pressure of hands and the hungry glances of eyes that could not look enough in any space of time allotted them. But there were others, following close after, which may and must be given. Whole volumes had been spoken in a few words, and yet the book was scarcely opened,—when Margaret Hayley rose from her knees and bending over the bed ran those dainty white fingers through the strangely mottled hair on the brow of the invalid. ”