A Speckled Bird Part 48

The last day of her stay was unusually warm for the season, and after reading to the sick man and leaving a bunch of jonquils near his cot, Eglah went quite late in the afternoon for a farewell walk along the beach. She coaxed the dogs unavailingly. Pilot, the collie, followed as far as the stone stile, and then deserted her. Beyond the end of the curve, where silver poplars came to the water's edge, she found a white marble seat, shaped like a horseshoe, with broad arms and an arched back elaborately carved. Winter rains had rippled and drifted the sand over its feet, and across one corner a bramble strayed. It was here Mr.

Herriott had spent his last night at home. She brushed aside dead leaves, sat down, and plucked away the encroaching vine. Deep in her heart sang his final words to Amos: "I have loved her since she was ten years old." Living or dead, he was hers; angry and estranged, but hers--always hers.

She thought of what life might have been with him here, remembered the warm, close clasp of his hand, the lover light in his fine eyes that was a caress that first hour on the cars; and recalling the last moment, when he strained her to his breast, her fair face flushed, her sad heart thrilled. Now that beautiful "might have been" lay irrecoverable as the "lost land of Lyonnesse," under its transparent shroud, and haunting echoes of tender tones tolled faintly, like buried bells of Folge Fond.

The day had been sultry, but the wind rose with the full, red moon that swung now above the cliffs, a globe of burnished copper, taking on the glory of gold as it climbed higher, and from some distant belfry a vesper benediction, low and sweet, slowly drifted over the great lake.

The water, gla.s.sy an hour before, thrilled and swelled in answer to the fingers of the wind, as a viol to the touch of its bow, and wavelets widened, s.h.i.+mmered as they ran. An eastbound schooner, all sails set, midway from sh.o.r.e to horizon, followed the path of light like a gigantic white moth fluttering upward to the moon. Where did her rays find Mr.

Herriott to-night? Sleeping his last sleep in the wind-carved marble sepulchre of glittering sastrugi, with that white moon of the "Great Ice" silvering the face now so dear to his abandoned wife? Or frozen and embalmed under the lee of towering blue hummocks, in the grim shadow of looming iron-bound sh.o.r.es? Or dying of starvation in a lampless, rent, ruined, iglooyah, with only Innuit corpses encircling him?

She fell on her knees, bowed her head on the seat, and prayed as never before for his safety.

The wind freshened from the south, and far away in some mountain lair thunder growled. Eglah looked long at the beautiful curve of the land, at the s.h.i.+vering poplars turning white in antic.i.p.ation of storm, at the irregular outline of the old stone pile projecting its spectral shadow on the s.h.i.+ning water lapping the terrace wall. Two hours later a gale swept the lake, and under bluish glare of lightning the waves showed their flas.h.i.+ng teeth.

With fine feminine instinct that penetrates far below the surface, yet gives no hint of the depths, Eliza divined that the unhappy woman desired unbroken solitude, and the foster-mother went early to her own bedroom.

Slowly Eglah mounted the spiral stairs that led to the billiard room and thence to the tower. The former was dark, and as she placed her candle on the table something fluttered and fell. It was a Chiriqui quetzal, perched upon a small slab brought from Palenque and fastened as a bracket above the fireplace. She picked it up, smoothed the brilliant, drooping feathers, and set it securely on the table, but a legend she had a.s.sociated with it made her s.h.i.+ver as she opened the door and stepped into the tower.

High above her, and just under the roof, the great lamp with its reflector threw light far out over the tossing waste of water, kindling crowns of fire where the wave crests broke. She sat down on a wooden bench at one of the open arches, and watched the departing cloud fringe of the storm rus.h.i.+ng from the far, sweet, throbbing South, to the icy silence of a more distant North; listened to the fitful moan of tired waves, trying to sob themselves to rest. Would the fleet _fohn_ reach Greenland, melt the blue cables strong as steel that held iceberg ranges, domed with frosted silver--open the yellow eyes of poppies, and waft the ivory gulls back to weary watchers? Often a blessing there, it was sometimes a curse. Could that fierce, hot, southern breath battle against the ceaseless wind, snow-laden even in suns.h.i.+ne, that sweeps forever from palaeocrystic seas across the white desolation of the great ice cap? Persistent study of Northern travels had so completely filled Eglah's mind with Arctic images, that by an inevitable magnetism every change of atmospheric conditions pointed to the Pole.

As the night waned, the moon emerged from ragged clouds, and gradually the lake quieted to its wonted crooning monologue, broken only by the strophe and antistrophe of startled water-fowl scattered by the storm.

Eglah heard the clock strike two, and went down to the billiard room.

The candle was flickering, and in its spasmodic light the eyes of the Quiche holy bird had a preternatural, sinister glitter. She hurried downstairs and locked herself in the den, the master's favorite room.

Cabinets were sealed, busts shrouded in cambric hoods, pictures veiled.

Only Mr. Herriott's desk remained as she remembered it, and here, with her arms crossed on the morocco cover and her face hidden upon them, she watched the night depart, saw the dawn of the day that would take her away forever from the home she had learned to love too late.

CHAPTER XXV

Heavy are the brakes with which suspense and anxious longing clog the wheels of time, yet seasons end; the spokes spin and come again, insistent reminders to waiting watchers of the endless, inexorable procession of years.

An early frost had hastened autumnal effects usually due a month later, and the atmosphere was crisp and sparkling. White oaks, maples, and sweet gums rustled their amber leaves sprinkled with red, black gums swung scarlet torches from every bough, wild grape vines festooned supporting trees with fluttering lace-of-gold, and crimson and bronze berry-brambles had colored warmly under the first frost kiss. Close to the little wire gate of the Dingle a tulip tree shook its burnished, brocaded banners, and in and around its branches coiled a muscadine, hung with glossy, purplish-black cl.u.s.ters that filled the air with delicious, challenging fragrance.

With an unopened roll of newspapers in her hand, Eglah leaned for some moments on the gate, admiring the superb vestments of yellow and red that nature hung out to bar the cold--a small cloud island of ruby near the horizon against which an acacia etched its slender lines, and listening to the song of a mocking-bird, that rose like a flute above the whistle of a partridge astray in feathery broom sedge. On the orchard slope Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l, basket in hand, groped and peered amid tufts of golden-rod, hunting a belated brood of young turkeys. Eglah pa.s.sed through the gate, went into the mill, and found a seat on one of the circular grinding stones. The wall had partly fallen on the west side, and the glow of a sinking sun lighted the dusty, cobwebbed rafters that upheld what remained of the roof. The chant of a portion of the stream rolling from mossy rocks to the ruined, sluggish race was low and soothing as a lullaby.

It had been a sad day, marking two years since the evening in the library when Judge Kent had been stricken; the beginning of a slow death. Dwelling upon the indelible incidents, an acute pain was added to the chronic ache from which his daughter's heart was never free. While missing her father sorely in her sorrowful isolation, she realized that death had come at the behest of mercy. As long as he lived his enemies could a.s.sail him at any moment; now he was comparatively safe under the snow of his native hills. If it were possible to recall him, she would not; she preferred to suffer alone that he might rest in peace. Two days before she had gone for a few hours to Y---- to see in his favorite church the recently completed tall, arched window, ablaze with rose, purple, crimson, and emerald gla.s.s, erected by her, "To the glory of G.o.d and in memory of Allison Kent."

Depressed and heartsick, she often sought the solitude of the mill, but in the grey gloom of the rafters above her head a pair of wrens had dwelt for several seasons, and now resented her presence, twittering their protest. Opening the New York and Boston papers, she glanced over one and laid it aside. Unfolding another, her fingers clutched the sheet, where headlines had been reprinted from an English journal:

"RETURN OF THE 'AHVUNGAH.'"

"After an absence of more than two years, the 'Ahvungah' has brought back the scientific explorers who, having investigated the phenomena of Arctic midnights, are glad to return to less rigorous temperatures. The second winter the vessel, while frozen in, was lifted upon ice hummocks in Whale Sound. Deeming the 'Ahvungah' fast until early summer, some of the party, availing themselves of a continuously s.h.i.+ning, two weeks' moon, and in order to avoid sun glare later in the season, made a sledging trip inland over the 'Great Ice,'--the _Sermiksoak_, but the loss of their dogs cut short the journey. During their absence the floe holding the vessel had been broken from the sh.o.r.e-ice by some upheaval unusual at that season, and had drifted many miles. While travelling on the 'ice-foot' to overtake the 'Ahvungah,' the members of the sledging party suffered very severely. Only two deaths occurred during the long voyage; a sailor was drowned in attempting to jump across a lead that closed suddenly after he fell, and the meteorologist, Herr Sprotmund, succ.u.mbed to heart disease while climbing a glacier. The 'Ahvungah' touched here only long enough to land the surgeon, Dr. Klinehurst, and the mail for America, then went on to The Hague. It was learned from the surgeon that two gentlemen of the party preferred to remain in Polar regions at least another year--Professor Roy, the palaeontologist, and Mr. Herriott, of New York, who is much interested in ethnography. Having studied the Eskimos of the Greenland coast, they crossed to the west sh.o.r.e of Smith's Sound, and will make their way slowly through Ellesmere Land, hunting traces of an Innuit tribe they believe to be the descendants of the Onkilon of Siberia. These gentlemen expect to meet whalers next year somewhere along the west coast, but should their plan fail, still another winter will imprison them."

Until this spasm of pain seized her heart, Eglah had not realized or acknowledged that she cherished any hope, save that G.o.d would preserve the life of the man who so completely renounced her. If she had vaguely trusted time might soften and remove his bitterness, she understood at last the mockery of a delusion that she had unconsciously indulged.

Above the evensong of the rippling water at her feet, rang his pa.s.sionate words that last day in the carriage: "I shall try not to come home." To escape the possibility of proximity to her he had plunged into unknown wilds, where only the trails of foxes, wolves, bears, could thread the silent desolation, and at all hazards he would keep the promise of his farewell note: "Your path in future shall be spared my shadow." Wandering into the jaws of death, rather than see her again; for how elusive, how slender, the chances of meeting whalers. As in a mirage she seemed to see him on the colonnade at Nutwood, as he stood looking with eloquent, happy eyes at her, a.s.suring her father: "When I know she is waiting at home for me, do you suppose all the ice in Greenland can shut me away from her?" And now the Arctic Circle would hold his chosen grave, because she could never cross it. The mail for America held no word for her; but doubtless kind messages had come to an old man whose sunken eyes would s.h.i.+ne with delight over tidings from "the lad."

To all of us come times when, self-surrendered to depression, some psychic imp drags from mental oblivion and shakes fiendishly before us ghoulish images long forgotten; and now, as purplish-grey shadows gathered in the mill, Eglah saw that vision of "Were-Wolves," the souls of wretched men fleeing from light, hiding in Polar midnight.

"Each panter in the darkness Is a demon-haunted soul, The shadowy, phantom were-wolves, Who circle round the Pole.

Their tongues are crimson flaming, Their haunted blue eyes gleam, And they strain them to the utmost O'er frozen lake and stream; Their cry one note of agony That is neither yelp nor bark, These panters of the northern waste Who hound them to the dark."

The voice of Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l calling her name aroused Eglah, and she staggered to her feet, swaying slightly as from a stinging blow. That silent, yearning tenderness, to which she had gladly yielded for so many months, now appeared an insult to her womanly pride.

Rejected and despised, abandoned forever, made by her husband's repudiation a target for gossip and harsh comment, why should she love him? Why, when too hopelessly late, had her heart so unexpectedly followed him, refusing to relax its quest?

Gathering the scattered papers, she left the mill and walked toward the house. As the core of an opal the west showed bands of pearl, beryl, sapphire, rose, and when twilight stole over hillside and dingle, Venus glowed in a violet sea, so large, palpitating, brilliant, she seemed a golden torch flaring in interstellar currents, to light the way of the thin young moon swimming beneath her. Did both torture the were-wolves?

At the gate Eliza waited, and putting an arm around the girl drew her into the hall of the cottage, where a lamp hung from the low ceiling.

Under its light Eglah's face showed white and rigid.

"Little mother, I must ask you to leave me to myself to-night. This has been a sad day in many ways. I miss my father, and one trouble of which I never speak, even to you--the only one who loves me--presses heavily upon me just now. There are the papers. You will find an account of the return of the 'Ahvungah,' but Mr. Herriott preferred to remain another year. Kiss me good-night, and ask G.o.d to take me soon, soon--to father."

The following winter was long and cold, with flurries of snow, and rattling of sleet, and it proved monotonously dull to the two women shut in the small house. The rooms were cosey, with curtains falling to the bright carpets; and roaring fires of oak and pine logs reddened the walls of the little parlor, where Eglah's upright piano enabled her to banish, at times, gloomy retrospection. Twice Mr. Whitfield came for a day and night, and cheered them with news of the outside world.

When the weather permitted Eliza to attend her Sabbath-school at Maurice, she occasionally persuaded Eglah to play the organ for the children, but she was annoyed by no obtrusive attention on the part of sympathetic country people, whose warm hearts respected the heavy mourning in which she was wrapped, and recognized her right to complete seclusion. At college one of her favorite studies had been Spanish, and without giving an explanation she now applied herself to it with renewed interest. When Eliza questioned her, she referred vaguely to the liquid melody that charmed her in Spanish poetry, and expressed a desire to translate a volume which pleased her.

No allusion to Mr. Herriott or his home now pa.s.sed her lips. Mr.

Whitfield's anxiety to understand the perplexing conditions, and Eglah's unwavering reticence, led him to interrogate Eliza.

"Mr. Whitfield, I can't tell you what I do not know. Mr. Herriott's name is never uttered by her, never mentioned now by me. She is so silent she would certainly forget how to talk if she were not a woman. She intends to go to Europe, and, as you know, keeps some business matters in readiness, but no date has been fixed. You will be advised in time to draw up her will, of which she talked to me about a week ago. The months come and go, and the dear child is always as you see her, calm, uncomplaining, with lips locked as a statue's, but I must say I feel all the time as if I am walking over a grave that may suddenly crumble and cave in under my feet."

Returning spring was welcome, and early summer brought once more the solace and diversion of long rides through solemn, lonely pine stretches, where only birds, nature's feathered syrinx, sounded in the silence, happy as human children prattling to their mother.

A mute acceptance of the inevitable, as far removed from resignation, as from pleading protest, had sealed Eglah's face in pa.s.sionless repose, pathetic and inscrutable. Inflexibly she maintained her resolve,

"--to fly no signal That the soul founders in a sea of sorrow,"

and solitude was her refuge. A long delayed monument having been completed at her father's grave, the desire to visit and inspect it dominated her, and one hot day the two women went North. To the devoted child bowed at the feet of a marble angel, the carved lips seemed to whisper her father's farewell words of commendation and tender grat.i.tude for her self-sacrifice in his behalf. Did he know now all it had cost--the branding humiliation, the fierce heart hunger she had found only when she offered herself on an altar that crumbled beneath her?

When the slab was covered with white violets, and she had pressed her lips to the name chiselled on the scroll, she put one hand on Mrs.

Mitch.e.l.l's shoulder and pointed to a gra.s.sy plot at her feet.

"Little mother, I hope it will not be long before I can shut my tired eyes forever, and when that happy day comes I want you to bring me here and lay me close to father, at his left side. One other thing you must not fail to do; after I am in my coffin be sure you take off my ring--my wedding ring--and if Mr. Herriott be living give it into his hand. He has wanted it back since the day he placed it on my finger, and only G.o.d knows how glad I shall be to surrender it. 'So long as ye both shall live' it is mine, but in the grave G.o.d gives us back our vows and sets us free."

The cold, hopeless renunciation in face and voice was more than the loving little woman could endure, and with a burst of tears she threw her arm about the girl, pressing her to her heart.

"My baby, have you no mercy for me, that you talk so cruelly? I shall be asleep by my Robert long before death calls one so young and strong and beautiful as my own dearie. Please have some consideration for me, and don't discuss such dreadful matters. I see from your eyes you want a promise. Well, if I outlive you--preposterous--I will forget nothing, provided you spare me all heart-sickening talk in future."

On the return journey Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l wished to stop in New York, but Eglah shrank from the possibility of meeting old friends, dreading questions. As she intended to see her cousin Vernon Temple for a day, she went on to the hotel in the city near Calvary House, where her foster-mother joined her after a day's shopping tour in New York. At the time of Eglah's visit of a few hours here with her father, and while her cousin was at Nutwood, they had discussed plans for a new altar much needed in the chapel, and during her residence at the Dingle she had submitted a design duplicating in many respects a carved and pillared shrine she and Judge Kent had seen near Avignon. The Father Superior and her cousin gratefully accepted her offer, and before she started to New England a letter announced the completion of the altar, and expressed the hope that she would be able to see it. If Mr. Herriott never returned, she locked deep in her heart an intention to make it a memorial to him, the donor of house and estate to the Brotherhood. The Provencal model was guarded by two seraphs; these she would add later, if the White North kept the wanderer folded forever to her breast of snow.

Of celibate organizations, Romish or Protestant, Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l distinctly disapproved, and she had listened with ill-concealed annoyance and uneasiness when at Nutwood Vernon Temple expatiated upon the n.o.ble work accomplished by Episcopal deaconesses in sisterhood homes. She had always dreaded his influence over his cousin, especially since her father's death. Calvary House was as the threshold of Rimmon, and when the carriage approached it she exclaimed:

"I have no intention of going inside that monkish den. How a sensible, level-headed man like Mr. Herriott could give away property for such fanatical use pa.s.ses my understanding. I may be an ecclesiastical ignoramus; I certainly am a 'narrow Methodist'; but, my dear baby, I can't broaden even to please you, and you must excuse me. I had a catalogue from the great poultry farm that I hear is only a mile or two farther out on this road, and while you see your cousin and examine the things you gave the chapel, I will drive on and order some white guineas. Here, don't forget your box of embroideries. I shall wait at the gate for you."

The bell on the latch rang as Eglah pa.s.sed under the gilt cross, and at the front door the porter, a young lay brother, looked at her in amazement.

"I wish to see Father Temple. I am his cousin, Eglah Kent."